Am I an animal? Part 1

Well it's supposed to snow in Flagstaff tonight and tomorrow, so clearly I am sitting here checking the weather every ten minutes, waiting for the snow to fall, and hoping for a text from my university tomorrow saying "class cancelled" aka... SNOW DAY.

Snow day, two of the greatest words invented. The definition of snow day is: A day in which leaving the house except to build a snow man will be putting yourself into danger so one must only eat popcorn and nutella and canned soup( the only things in my pantry right now) drink lots of tea and snuggle up to a book one is really looking forward to reading. That's my daydream for tomorrow, not what is actually going to happen. I am actually going to have to put on all the clothes I own and march through sleet and snow across campus to my classes. But what's important here really, is that one of my classes is actually helping me change.

Woah, change? Can people really change? Wait, can I really evolve myself in the course of 3 months? The answer is yes, I've done it in a week. It all started last Monday.

Monday evenings I have class called HUM 373, aka Nature and Values. I am the only humanities major in a class which all environmental studies majors are required to take. We were having an in class discussion after our grey haired lanky man of a professor wearing his plaid shirt read us the syllabus, and it was all about why aren't we changing. Everyone knows the ozone layer is depleting the Hopi tribe has said we have already gone so far we can't turn back and a British guy who knows what he is talking about has stated that after this century we are probably done, kaput, peace out planet Earth. So why aren't we changing when change is a part of our culture already?

We threw around ideas, and then I came to a conclusion on a whim said it out loud and everyone went, yeah. I am an animal. You, me, the badger, my best friend, my dog, my sister, all every single one of us, animals. But no one looks at it that way. Because we think we are above it. Because we live in our cultures we think we are not apart of nature.

We believe that we can own anything, we don't think of ourselves as a part of the land we live on, we think of ourselves as owning it. It part of our culture, we own our animals and land and we are certainly not animals, we are humans. But it's also part of our culture to change.

We are amazing animals, but we are animals. So try and think about that... try and think about ways you and I could change, do you want to change?

Should we really own our ideas?

It's not secret, we all want to be unique. People may try to blend in and go with the flow but everyone wants to feel special and original and unique, especially when it comes to our thoughts and ideas.

No matter what we look like, we will always be dissatisfied with something. It doesn't matter what we weigh, if our hair is turning grey, how we dress or anything, we will always be dissatisfied. But with our ideas and thoughts it's different. How good does it feel to have that ah-hah moment when you realize something? How fast does your heart beat when you realize the answer to the question you've been pondering all day? How perfect is that moment when realization knocks you over when you least expect it? It's electrifying, that feeling of I've figured something out! The moment when for one second your idea has solved the riddle of life, and you did it all on your own! God, there is nothing like it!

To all of a sudden come to a conclusion on something you spend hours and days and months and years pondering makes a person feel important and special and original, if only for a minute. I love that feeling. That's how I feel when I write a blog post, I feel for just a tiny second that my original ideas are more important to my survival in life than anything else!

But then it hits me, I'm human, of course I'm having these thoughts. How can my thoughts be truly original when people all over the world are probably thinking the same things and coming to the same conclusions at the same time! This was an ah-hah moment I had last night, and it was tragic. I felt cut down and completely lacking in intelligence and originality. Thoughts that I spend hours and months and years thinking about felt.... like they belonged to someone else.

But then came another moment, an ever more important ah-hah than the original thought I had in the first place! Thank God people are having the same thoughts as me! If my thoughts really are about what I think is best for me and those around me and humanity, I want , no I need other people to be thinking the same things!

It's great that we have ah-hah moments, but it's even better that we as humans can think and feel the same things as other people around us and even contribute to others around us! For a blog that's all about the living, whether they be the living past, future, or present, that has to be something I realize.

Ideas these days can be patented and protected, but really, ideas are meant to be shared. That's the beauty of our minds, our sixth sense if you will. The beauty that our minds can give us more happiness and truth than any other sense we have.

We have to share our ideas so that other's can experience that wonderful ah-hah moment, so that humanity can help each other.