People say humans are good. I don’t believe them.
I have watched them when they thought no one was looking. I have seen the small thefts. The quick lies. The way they reach first for their own share and leave the rest to scramble. It is not anger I feel. It is something colder. Something like recognition.
We are selfish. All of us. It is not a matter of bad or good. It is a fact, like cold in winter or thirst in the desert. We want what we want, and we want it now. Sometimes we are patient. But even patience is just another move in a longer game.
We take what we can. We give only so we can sleep easier, or to paint ourselves in kinder colors. We say we love. Maybe we do. But love, too, often feeds the self. We do not love in spite of ourselves. We love because it fills something in us that we cannot name.
We say we care. And we do, in the way a man cares for his hand or his heart. If the hand is hurt, he tends it. Not for the hand’s sake, but for his own. Compassion, too, often follows the same trail. We are kind because the hurt of others makes us uneasy. Their pain is a stone in our shoe.
When it matters—when the choice comes close and cuts deep—we choose ourselves. We choose survival. We choose to keep breathing, even if it means another must lose their breath.
It does not make us monsters. It makes us human.
Even the kind ones. Even the ones who build churches and hospitals and homes for the lost. They are not saints. They are bargaining with the ache inside them. They are striking deals with their own fears, their own loneliness, their own hunger to be seen and remembered.
There is a cruelty to it, but it is a quiet cruelty. A cruelty that does not shout or boast. It simply acts. It steps over the weak and tells itself a story to make it seem noble.
The cruelty is not in the act alone. It is in how easily we forget the blood on our hands. How quickly we wash them and move on. How we tell ourselves it had to be done. That the world is harsh and the strong must survive.
And maybe it is true. Maybe the world does not want saints. Maybe it has no place for them. Maybe it only wants the stubborn, the hungry, the ones who will not kneel unless it serves them.
Even in our goodness, there is need. Even in our sacrifice, there is a thirst. A wanting to be noticed, to be praised, to be remembered. A selfishness buried deep, but alive and kicking.
We pretend it is not there. We pretend we are pure. It is a good lie, and sometimes it helps us sleep.
But the truth is simpler, colder.
We are selfish.
We are hungry.
We are alone in a way that no love, no friendship, no god can ever fully cure.
And the strange thing—the cruel thing—is that sometimes, knowing all this, we still choose to be kind. Not because we are good. But because we know what we are. Because we know how easy it would be to do worse. Because sometimes the small choice to be better—just once, just today—is the only fight worth having.
Not a clean fight. Not a proud fight. Just the endless, ordinary struggle against the hunger inside.
And if there is any hope left in us, maybe it is there. In the choice to reach out, even with a hand that is shaking and stained.
Not pure.
Not perfect.
Just human.