Dear Humanity,
Relatively, only a minuscule percentage of you know who I am, let alone that I’m on the speech and debate team at my college. On said speech and debate team, I compete in an event called “impromptu” that I have a fairly intense love/hate relationship with. This event takes place in seven minutes, during which time you’re given 2-3 quotations to chose one out of, then about a minute to write a speech, then the remainder of the time to actually give the speech. Yes, it’s fairly nerve-wracking, and last year I specifically wrote an extra speech so I wouldn’t have to compete in it.
How is this relevant to you, Humanity? Let me explain, I promise I’m getting somewhere with this.
See, I’ve started to notice something of a trend amongst my speeches, something that I never gave much thought to. No matter how cynical and sarcastic I am out of rounds, as soon as I march into that room to start my seven minutes, it’s like I’m all of the sudden the biggest hippie on the entire planet. I love you in those rounds, Humanity, like I’ve never seemed to love anything else. And that’s bizarre to me, considering that I’ve spent most of my twenty years on this planet (still weird saying twenty) hating you and all you represent. I even wrote a poem called “The Human Disease” when I was in the tenth grade.
What have we come to?
Money fills you up with greed
Together we stand weaker
We are the human disease
Trashing all the forests
But not replanting the seed
Fouling up the ozone
We are the human disease
Some think they’re better than others
Most think they’re better than me
Stereotypes lead to suicide
We are the human disease
Not knowing what we’re meant to do
A ring with all the wrong keys
Searching for a purpose
We are the human disease
Material things are important
The group who is crowded has three
Everyone feels alone all the time
We are the human disease
Damn. Even I’d forgotten how harsh that poem was. Sorry about that.
Point being, as the awkward, consistently bullied girl who would rather read than make a new friend, I wasn’t particularly interested in Humanity. Then I started watching Doctor Who, moved away for college, and started competing in impromptu. Those three things may seem entirely separate, but I’m getting there.
Here’s an example: One round, I chose the quotation “Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile” by Albert Schweitzer. My speech kind of went like this:
INTRODUCTION: Brief overview of Doctor Who
POINT ONE: Why the Doctor finds humanity worth saving over and over again
SUBPOINT: Spends a lot of time with human companions that are always surprising and delighting him in their humanity.
SUBPOINT: No matter what point in time he travels to, humanity is always there in some regard, stubbornly pushing on.
POINT TWO: How this applies to the real world
SUBPOINT: Yes, we kill each other over stupid things and start wars and oppress people, but that side of us never really wins. We took down Hitler, demolished the Berlin Wall, flew to the moon. Those dark corners exist, yes, but if we just realized and accepted how clever and beautiful our race is, then maybe we can make those dark corners a little bit lighter. Maybe if we all saw humanity the way the Doctor does, with exasperated love, things might be a little bit better.
And so on, and so forth. I gave two Doctor Who speeches that basically went like that (luckily, you can’t get the same judge for two different rounds, so if you use the same speech/format, it won’t hurt you). And honestly, before I had to start thinking up speeches in a minute and a half, I didn’t even realize I had those opinions. But I do, and that’s the incredible thing.
Humanity, I love you. You are petty and fat and violent but you are so gosh darned amazing that none of that matters at the end. Humanity, I love you. You build nuclear weapons and kill thousands of people, you let the people you don’t bomb starve, and you’re constantly at war, but you are so beautiful sometimes. The same species who created Hitler and Mussolini created Nerdfighters and the Peace Corps. You do stupid things all the time and sometimes you just don’t seem to get it, but when you do get it, damn girl, you can accomplish anything.
So let’s accomplish anything.
Love,
Bri
