The Beauty of Humanity

I've been scrolling through Humans of New York this entire morning, and there's only one thing I can really say: Humans are amazing.

Just as God said, He really did create humans in the best of moulds.  There are so many great and wonderful things that we are capable of. All of the love, wisdom, exuberance, honesty, it's overwhelming sometimes. And yet, most of the time all of these amazing abilities are overlooked and forgotten every time something horrible comes up on the news. Suddenly, it seems that humans are nothing more than animals, just with smarter and scarier minds.

Brandon's TEDx talk really blew me away and opened my eyes. Especially since what he was talking about was exactly what the people in my own country and my home town of Jakarta were facing each day. As I'm writing this, my ears are being surged with a cacophony of terrifying news stories. According to them, all Jakartans have evidently seemed to lose all sense of their human-ness as they have allowed a violent murder of a young woman take place without anyone coming to her rescue. I'm not saying this isn't horrible, but as Brandon said, sometimes we're so overwhelmed by all of the horrible things that we hear in our daily lives that we come to believe that we really are that horrible, even when in reality not all of us are that horrible. Most of us are just nice, normal beings. Human beings.

As I scrolled down his entire HONY Facebook page and tumblr for a surprising 5 hours since I woke up, I really was inspired. This guy embodies everything that I love; curiosity, beautiful photography, a daringness to just get to know random people with the belief they're more magical than they let on, and a selfless impulse to give back whenever he can. I can't say I want to be exactly like him (it seems someone's already beat me to creating a Humans of Jakarta page anyways) but I really hope I can embody all of those things that I admire in him.

For all lovers of great street photography, honestly simple stories, and randomly stunning fashions, sneak a peek at his page, but a word of warning: it's surprisingly addictive ;)

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/