Continuing on the note of the Big Picture, I had a thought this morning about emotion that was somewhat consoling. It feels like my emotions bubble to the surface so much more easily now, and I think a big reason is the pandemic. We are more stressed, exhausted, and anxious this year, much more than normal. I get angry much quicker than I used to, and the underlying tension can’t be helping. But then I thought about the totality of our species, every single human that’s ever lived, and the range of emotion that we have all experienced. Have I experienced anything unique compared to every other human who’s ever lived? Probably not. One could even make a list of emotions that are possible for a human being: joy, anger, envy, sadness, excitement, fear, hope, etc. In fact, scientists have been doing experiments and analysis on the topic for decades. Exploring these thoughts didn’t immediately subside my anger, but it enabled me to recognize it for what it was, that it wasn’t me, it was just an emotion in reaction to a stimulus (underlying or not). In one sense we are a collection of biological wires, and in another—is our compilation of wires so special that no other has ever created such connections? And finally, if those things are true, what kind of connections can we then form between each other?