The Queen's Speech: not my usual brand.

You will never find a person with my eyelashes and I bet we all favor different shades of blue. You and I are not equally artistic, intelligent, or patient. We have felt life in different ways and you have learned things that I will never learn, but the most binding adjective that each of us shares is the nature of our existence.

We are human.  We are the Shakespeares, the Martin Luthers, the Platos, the George Washingtons, the Florence Nightingales. We are also the students, the parents, the homeless, this disabled. We are the learners and the doers, the mature and naive, the Nows and the Laters. All are good and all are bad.

We are human and we have power at our fingertips. Biology taught me that we are bipedal Homo-sapiens with a number of evolutionary advantages that let us thrive. But more than that, we have the advantage of spirit. 

Look at my hands. Look at your hands. We have these extensions with opposable thumbs that can wipe away tears and mold clay. Our hands will write articles that will change history or hold a hand that will change a life. They will pound the table for attention when it is most necessary to listen or they will plug the ears when it's time to stop. 

We have feet, too. They run and jump and dance. We will travel the world on our feet searching for the meaning of existence. Along the way, we will make the ground we walk on richer. 

Sometimes I wonder how my mind works; I only know that it does. We can memorize scores of information, think logically and illogically, and conquer the most difficult problems. We have the ability to remember lists of facts on the nation's history and of our own history.

We feel deeply for each other. I wonder if there are any other creatures who can feel the same sense of pain, loss, longing, fear, excitement, or joys that we do. We love so much that sometimes it hurts. We have pain so real and scars so deep that we start to feel broken. 

And then there is power. I am afraid of our destructive power. You saw her on the bridge and him in the bar and them in the plane. You heard the tears and knew it couldn't be fixed, but then... there is power. I am human, and you are human, because I can create and you can create. In the hands of the masterpiece painter and the breathtaking poet and the concert pianist and the child's song, the world is whole again. We are human again... but we never really stopped.