Thanksgiving is a peculiar holiday for many. Although it is celebrated by the masses as a day for recognizing and appreciating our blessings and good fortune, not all of us have enjoyed those blessings and good fortune. For them, life has been an agonizing test of their patience and their resolve as humans. Many suffered and many others did not survive that test.
Nature can be harsh on all life forms. We live with the simple fact that life is full of dangers, some so dangerous that entire species that have survived for millions of years can be wiped out in a few years.
Scientists have estimated that there are around 8,7 Million species of plants and animals in existence at this moment. Humans are just one of them, and we've only been around a few million years of our planet's billions of years of existence.
Species do not last forever. In fact, according to researchers and scientists, more than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, have died out.
Of those living species, scientifically referred to as an, "eukaryote'' (an organism consisting of a cell or cells in which the genetic material is DNA in the form of chromosomes contained within a distinct nucleus).
Eukaryotes include all living organisms other than the eubacteria and archaebacteria globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included.
According to a recent poll, seven out of ten biologists think we are currently in the throes of a sixth mass extinction.
Every day, according to scientists, "up to 150 species are lost.” That could be as much as 10 percent a decade
Our attempts to rid the planet of dangerous or annoying life-form often inadvertently destroy other life forms. And even some of our own natural defenses are rendered useless in the process.
Extinction's trigger is the result of a major change in the habitat where the species exists. Whether it is a vertebrate (fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles) or other life-forms, All forms of plants are subject to the same natural process. No life-form is eternal.
Take, for example, the COVID-19 Pandemic that has literally become a fact-of-life threat to our own survival. Left to mutate on its own, it becomes a greater and greater threat that will be harder to stop. That means it will continue to mutate until humans can no longer defend ourselves from it, and we cease to survive as a species. Perhaps a few million years later we will be replaced by another species that can think, and reason, and defend itself.
As some die from COVID or its variants, or suffer (often needlessly), some humans continue to scoff at the risks. But as the threat grows, some of those risk-taking humans frequently end up regretting their decision to forego the simplest of precautions, claiming it's their right to do what they do. I agree that it's their right to expose themselves to the risks, as long as they isolate themselves in caves while the rest of mankind attempts to eradicate this threat so that humans can survive as a species. If we don't survive, those in the caves can step out into the sunshine of a new reality and carry on as if nothing has happened.
But we are not doing that, and life as we know it is still being attacked by a disease that is fully capable of wiping out mankind.
That said, I am thankful on this day of Thanksgiving, that I have made the choice to do whatever is needed for me to live, in spite of the actions of others who, for whatever reason, decide to take their chances elsewhere.
