Nature

Often people ask me: what is the sense in the life of animals? They eat, reproduce, and die. They do things that seem to us as useless and expensive in time and energy.

Well… I’ll tell you. It only seems useless. But if you think well about it isn’t senseless at all. I know people tend to have difficulty with this, so I will try to explain it as good as I can.

Life has existed, since its very beginning, for over 3,8 billion years. It would never have survived in a world without natural cycles where can be relied on for survival (think about the seasons for example). Life began because of endless repetition, endless attempts of biomolecules to get together and gain capacity for nutrition, reproduction and relation. Maybe to you it would seem useless all those millions of attempts over tens of millions of years, but without that we would never have existed, nor any other living being.

And by getting a couple of biomolecules together the story has only just begun. Because evolution, meaning the survival of the fittest, has acted upon life for almost 4 billion years.

Yes. 4 billion years. You know what I would say to you? Don’t even try to imagine it. No matter how hard you try, our human mind is way too limited to understand the full meaning of such a long time. Even more so because we’re such a young species; only 200,000 years old.

Until relatively short ago speaking in evolutional terms the human species was just like all other animals; we followed the natural cycles of nature, and we did not stray from that, because that would mean a sure death. Then we started developing intelligence, and we started doing things that no other animal before us has done: we started to think consciously. We started questioning. We started changing the environment to favor us, instead of adapting ourselves to the environment. And we strayed of the natural cyclus of life, because our intelligence had provided us enough knowledge to feel as if we didn’t need nature anymore to survive. We became overconfident, believing we could reign over nature.  We became arrogant, believing ourselves superior to all other species. We became different from all other living beings, because evolution made us so.

Dear reader. I don’t want to offend anyone, nor go against ones religious believes or anything, but in my eyes the human being is no better and no worse than any other living being. Okay, we have cognitive intelligence, we have changed the world more than any other animal has ever been able to, we think about life, the sense in things, in how we can make our lives easier, more comfortable, and a very long etc. but still… in my mind that is not very distinguishing if you learn what other living beings are capable of. Because what I think; we’re not the ones we should be amazed about, rather we should be amazed at nature for creating us and every living being. Besides, we might have cognitive intelligence, but there is a thing that I tend to call natural intelligence, which is basically the intelligence that is in our very biomolecules, in our DNA, that is for a great part the result of all the species that are our ancestors. It is the intelligence to survive. And that’s what I truly admire. Because even the most simple beings, which aren’t even living beings, have that! the tendency and desire to survive it so great, that even viruses, made up from only a few proteins and some genetic material, are true masters at that.

But well, I am writing a lot, going of the main theme, and losing myself in telling all the things I would like to share! haha

What I wanted to explain now is that living beings live in cycles. They depend on things like the seasons, the availability of certain nutrients, the right conditions, etc. I’m sure you have seen nature documentaries at least once in your life, and that you might have wondered why animals spend so much time in mating rituals, in travelling, and in doing highly specific things. Well, they do that because that is their way to survive. It may not always seem very logic, and those kind of things are often very expensive time and calorie-wise. But it’s the result of evolution and although it is a kind of entrapment, it is also what makes a species thrive.

Maybe I’m not explaining this good at all. Besides, I’m neither a biologist, nor a psychiatrist or a sociologist or whatever. I’m simply someone with a great love and admiration for nature. And I might be totally mistaken. So don't take my words for truth. It just me expressing my ideas, and you have the liberty to disagree with me. 

What I just wanted to say is that… I love the cycles of live that the living beings live. It’s the result of something much older than we can ever imagine, and it has given place to so much diversity and so many marvelous things. It’s breathtaking if you really take the effort to understand nature (something most people regrettably never do...). We ourselves do not really live by the natural cycles anymore, although we are still totally dependent of it. I bet that’s not something you like to admit, right? That’s because nowadays we live so disconnected from nature that we believe ourselves the ones who are in charge.

We must not forget; we’re Nature’s product. Not the other way around. Nature created us, and even though we have enormous egos and we might feel so much better than all microorganisms, plants and animals, we’re totally dependent on them. Nature is very fickle and unpredictable. And we’re just one of its experiments.