The Irony of the Human Tribe

Everyone treats maturation and growth as if it is the first time that it has ever happened when it happens to them.  I am guilty of this.  I know this, yet I am always shocked and alarmed when others do this.  We are so much the same.  We spend so much of our lives trying to show our individuality – and yet – we are the same. 

So our children are not “the” original children.  I think that nature helps us by giving us parenting hormones and these hormones make us ferocious protectors and providers for our offspring.  I do not think that our children are all that original; just as ‘we’ are not all that original.  We are part of the human tribe.  We like being individual and we like belonging to certain groups and this is all part of being human.  Being individual is part of the universal human experience.  Being individual makes us more universal.

I find this endearing.  I find it endearing that the very thing we seek, in order to be different, is the thing that identifies us as universally human.