The Strange Creature Called Human

 

We live upon a tiny world,

a small and fragile fragment

floating through an immeasurable universe.

Around us, galaxies collide.

Stars are born in furnaces of light.

Worlds drift through darkness,

and realities stretch beyond the furthest borders

the human mind can imagine.

And yet—

in the middle of all this immensity,

a single conversation can change the shape of our day.

A few words, carried from one human to another,

can lift our heart,

break our heart,

or quietly alter our life forever.

And every night,

we disappear.

We close your eyes

and surrender the world.

For a few hours,

we are no longer a witness to ourself.

We do not watch ourself sleeping.

We do not witness the moment we vanish

from our own awareness.

Then, somehow,

the world returns.

Our memories return.

Our name returns.

Our worries, our happiness, our unfinished thoughts—

all of them gather around us again.

And we return.

We open our eyes.

And once again,

we become that extraordinary creature

capable of changing another human being

simply by moving air.

Our lungs push it upward.

Our throat gives it vibration.

Our mouth shapes those vibrations into words.

Invisible waves leave our body

and enter another.

Think about how strange that is.

We were born into an impossible mystery.

We opened our eyes

inside existence itself.

There was light.

There was gravity.

There were dreams.

There was music.

There were oceans, trees, stars,

and the inexplicable fact

that there was something—

instead of nothing.

Nobody explained why.

Nobody explained why we were here

to witness any of it.

And somehow, after a few years,

we learned to look at this impossible miracle

and say,

**“Just another day.”**

We became a creature capable of love—

of loving another so deeply

that their happiness can enter our own body

and become our happiness.

Nothing happened to us.

We were not the one who laughed.

We were not the one who received the good news.

We were not the one whose dream came true.

And yet their joy

appeared somewhere inside us.

What kind of creature are we?

We can suffer from tomorrow

before tomorrow has even arrived.

The future we fear does not exist.

Not yet.

And still,

give our imagination enough freedom

and the nonexistent future can make our heart race,

turn our stomach,

steal our sleep

and fill the darkness around us.

We can be wounded

by things that have never happened.

We can mourn

what has not yet been lost.

And perhaps the strangest mystery of all

is that our body is constantly changing.

Cells disappear.

Cells are replaced.

Our face slowly becomes another face.

Our thoughts evolve.

Our memories fade and return.

The persons we were yesterday

is already partly gone.

And yet, every morning,

we wake believing:

**I am still me.**

We carry an invisible thread

through all those changes

and call it **self**.

We know that we exist

without ever being able to fully explain

what this “me” actually is.

Being ourself

is the most intimate fact we will ever know—

and perhaps

one of the most impossible things

we will ever explain.

And then comes another miracle.

We can close your eyes

and return to worlds

that no longer exist.

A childhood room.

A face that has disappeared from our life.

A road we once walked.

A voice we have not heard in years.

A hand that once held our’s.

We can summon the dead

without bringing them back.

We can visit yesterday

without travelling anywhere.

We can create entire universes

behind our closed eyelids.

And so,

behind this face,

inside this fragile body,

lives a private universe

no one else can completely enter.

Perhaps this is what makes us

so strange.

We are creatures made of dust

who can think about eternity.

Creatures whose bodies change every moment

yet who whisper,

**“I am.”**

Dr Sassine El Nabbout © 2026

Photo SAMA Creations/ AI made