Sometimes you just realize the people around you. Not just that they’re there, or that they’re walking by you or that they exist, but the gravity of their existence. That every person has a conscience, and each has their own thoughts and feelings and desires and stories. That for every action you do, there is a consequence on another human being with the same level of sentience as you, and that scares the hell out of me. I’m scared of hurting someone; because I know how easily I get hurt. I don’t ever want to have someone feel as shitty as I do sometimes. And it’s not even a selfless reason, either. The main reason I’m afraid is that it’ll be all my fault for another’s pain.

That’s why I think we’re all so fragile. We carry all this weight; all these bundled up messes of ramblings of our own inner workings, and they’re all so in danger of getting destroyed. We’re so, so weak. So much weaker than if we were a pile of rocks or a tree or even a dust mite. One word can crush us, and there need not be a physical hit to send us reeling. Humans are the strongest yet weakest species to ever exist. We’re scared of ourselves; scared to hurt each other, and for those who aren’t afraid of this, all they do is destroy.

No one has no meaning. No person doesn’t matter, and every word or thought uttered by another person ultimately has as much credibility as another’s. Our feelings, our emotions, our actions dictated by these things – they all matter, and sometimes that’s so hard to grasp. Like those people walking down the street next to you, jostling you in the crowd, never to be seen by your eyes again – how could they possibly matter? How could they possibly have a whole life and a slew of memories behind them? In a crowd, there are a million, and yet that means a million consciences, all struggling to break through, to be noticed. A consequence of everyone having meaning is anonymity.

We are the center of every experience we live through. Empathy is so hard to reach, because it’s so hard to comprehend sometimes that another person could live life in such a way, in such a depth as you do. That maybe you’re not original. That maybe those deep thoughts in your head; they’ve already been thought, a million times over and a million years ago. But still, humans are tsunamis of inspiration, of messes, of love and hate and obsession and weakness, of comprehension beyond our scope of thought. Constantly, we churn out ideas and emotions, like philosophical machines. We are always putting something into the world, whether it’s telepathically through our heads or through the work we complete or the essays we write. That elusive concept originality might be easier to find than one might think in a world of 7 billion active minds and hearts, each with their own life and story to tell.