We are all connected. This is not a new observation. But what connects us is what we all have in common, the plants, the animals, each and every individual on earth: Unique in the known universe, we have life. Each and every one of us is experiencing the unlikely confluence of events that is the fact that we are alive, with our DNA replicating and our eating and pooping and respirating. What an improbable and miraculous bunch of facts. 

And this is something we share with absolutely everyone. Of course we share life with our plant and animal friends, and they don’t infuriate us too often. But we have life in common with each and every human, no matter how much they p!ss us off. We humans are most likely to feel hatred for one another, more so than hatred for the rest of the natural world (destructive disregard is more our orientation to non-human living things). But when we think of our common humanity, what we usually think of is how we all want to hold our loved ones close, and be prosperous, and be happy. What unites us is even more fundamental than that: It’s our big human brains, with all our emotions, sharing this planet. We all enjoy the freakish heritage of our bizarre human intelligence, and we don’t even have to know anything about each other to appreciate that. Just by being a living human, we know most of the most important things about each other.

And we’ve missed this for 100,000 years. I think it’s because we haven’t had a universe-wide view of our situation. For almost all of our history, we’ve been fish swimming in an ocean of life. We are surrounded in it, and knew nothing else. All we could see is how to make life work better for us – grow the plants we want, grow the animals we want, get rid of the plants and animals we don’t want. Make people different from us more like us, or get rid of them too. All life, trying to manipulate it, all the time. There was no concept of a world that was not-life. 

But now we know that there is an inconceivably vast universe of matter out there. It goes on infinitely. As far as we know, there is no more life out there. Our neighboring planets – no life. The outer reaches of the galaxy – no life that’s found us. Beyond the galaxy? If there’s life out there, we don’t know about it. Most of what the infinite universe consists of is non-life. 

So what we all have in common is that we are alive. You, and me, and everyone else, and every living thing. Over billions of years, we’ve figured out how to turn what’s here on Earth into a biological machine, and we are all little (or very big) engines of replicating molecules. With every living being we encounter, we have the opportunity to greet our fellow planetary travelers with recognition of our common aliveness. I see you. We are both here and alive. It’s pretty great, huh?