Walking through streets cold and dreary, I see people and things drooping and grey, faces and places sad and tormented, and I feel as they do. Why must these things be felt: feelings? But rest assured; we are humans and humans have a most profound ability—to feel at all. So profound, in fact, that it can be thought that it is perhaps our purpose. If not accepted as purpose, fine; though contemplation on the matter would be worthwhile. Contemplate your ability—yours in that you are human—that feelings and feelings alone could be so influential that you may make a choice to expire yourself based on them; you may change yourself for them, change others.

Is it simple coincidence that we select the fuel of our sustenance with our feelings; the pleasures we choose, our careers, our vices? How could something that is only a chemical remnant of our evolution—a defense mechanism against outward threats—control us so completely internally? We have reason now, yes—but is the explosion of reason not simply evidence to what was there before and what reason constantly battles against?

But I feel no reason to battle against myself. I can feel, so it is my job to feel. And when really getting down to the nitty-gritty, I can classify most all of my feelings into good and bad. I have a natural tendency to surround myself with good feelings, as I presume everyone does, and so I can see simply that my place on this rock, as I presume everyone’s is, is to live an experience where I feel good things. The draw towards good feelings is so undeniably felt by all that it cannot be called anything but natural.

What makes us different from nature, though, and what perhaps gave us dominion over nature, is that we do not all feel the same about everything. We all have our own ideas of good and bad, and these ideas color everything we see. To a masochist, the sting of pain is good; to a pimp, exploitation is good. Pigs all like the taste of shit and pigs all get along. Us humans don’t all get along and since the dawn of thought have made diabolical killing machines to tell each other about it.

But do not despair! Contemplation is all that is needed here—the origin and the history are not so important as the present implications of having such an ability. Of the technology and thought that is to come, what will first be the result: perpetual peace, or annihilating war? Can we live happily as we are, or must we return to the animal simplicity of nature to do so?

So go forth and contemplate. I will, with pen in hand, in the hope that words, my own and those in response, might say something to me of how I feel. For what are words more than the product of uncontrollable chemicals swimming around inside of me.