Week 1 This I Believe Reflection

I learn something new about NPR all the time. Though, my initial thoughts still take me back to being carsick in the back of my dad's old dirty Subaru, my head resting against the window as I suffocated in the smell of old upholstery and in the ringing exposure to NPR being blasted at what I felt were unhealthy decibels from the speakers located behind my head. My memories of NPR are not all that pleasant, but recently I learned that NPR at one point asked its audience to send in essays about their own personal beliefs, the name of the project is: "This I Believe."

The first "This I Believe" essay was my favorite. Written by Matt Harding, a guy paid to travel around the world and dance, the essay states his belief that globalization is forcing our brains to evolve. His belief is that human brains were designed to interact with a tribe-sized group of people, but in the present day, we find ourselves linked to a network of billions more people than our primitive brains can handle. He finds that he has two impulses that are at odds with each other: one is the impulse is to shy away from the rest of the world that is weird and foreign, and the other is the want to connect with and learn about anyone from far away. After dancing with people from all sorts of diverse cultures and seeing them laugh and smile and act silly, he finds that his initial instinct to see everyone different from him as a threat is a setback in a world where we no longer live in a small tribe. Thus, he believes that our brains will evolve, that his children will be better adapted to interacting with the large network of life around us, and that they will be more eager to learn and connect with the billions on this Earth.

I really liked this essay because I share the impulse to travel and the curiosity to meet people from far away places. I never could figure out why when I'm a tourist or a visitor in some city I am compelled more to be outgoing and talk to complete strangers. I am rarely that sociable on the average weekend, but if I meet somebody walking their dog at a national park, I go up and say hello and am genuinely eager to learn about them. I think it has something to do with how mind-boggling it is to try to imagine billions of other people in the world, thinking and feeling and being just as conscious I am and being the centers of their own lives, because all I've ever known is being the center of my own life. I feel that traveling is enlightening, that when people meet complete strangers and find them to be friendly for no reason at all, they grow with a more positive look on humanity. Being comforted by seeing strangers act silly, makes them more human and less alien (no pun intended). Seeing the warmth in people you don't even know makes it easier to find the goodness in everybody, and regarding people with goodness instead of fear or animosity is essential to living happily in a world where we will only be exposed more and more to the curious and diverse people and cultures from far away.

Rhetorical Devices: litotes, parallelism, antithesis.