i see our faces sometimes, just in a crowd, and it makes me think about what we truly are. every once in a while, i wonder if our sense of being special is just a story we tell ourselves. we build our histories, our ideas of how important we are, and it all feels so certain. but how does it make sense that our kind of life is the only kind of life in the universe. the universe holds so many stars, so many planets for things to grow and change that we might never imagine. maybe what we consider unique isn't unique at all, just a different form of the common. maybe there are intelligences, integrated and living amongst us, that we just don't see as intelligent. maybe our uniqueness is just a perspective.