What a gift DNA is. The spark of life is a great start, proteins that can replicate themselves. But without a way to change and evolve, there would be no douglas firs, or great white sharks, or dragonflies, just molecules copying…somehow. Maybe that’s what life looks like on other planets. But we, the species of Earth, alone in the universe to our knowledge, have the ability to change as we reproduce. And it has resulted in the infinite variety we see around us every day. 

I think, too, about the tightly-woven web that natural selection represents. Every organism’s evolution is pressured by another organism – the plants that want more from animals, or less from animals, the animals that want more of their own mates, or need to avoid predation, or need to pursue the next meal. All living things in an ecosystem are exerting pressure on each other to spur the next phase of evolution. Another way we are all connected.

And as humans, we are also under pressure to change and grow, within our own lifetimes. My desire to be a better daughter, colleague, partner, friend causes me to engage in at least some self-examination, and wonder how I can improve. I want to get the things I want from you, and give you the things you want from me.  I’m not evolving in a vacuum, I want to be better for you. Sometimes that growth is painful, the burning sting of shame or regret. Sometimes it’s joyful, stretching boundaries of what I thought I could do. But it’s all because of the place I occupy as a being connected to you, on my own evolutionary track to be just a little bit better. You pushed me to be better.

Our very DNA is shaped by pressures we exert on each other. Our human brains are shaped by the pressures we exert on each other. Without competition and engines of improvement that we get from all other living things in our little biomes, we would still be proteins. All of us have the ability to evolve, and we can thank our fellow beings for creating conditions that push us to be more competitive animals than we were last generation, or better humans than we were yesterday.