A few days ago, I was in line for lunch. I hadn't been having a great day - schoolwork was piling up, I didn't get enough sleep the night before, and my allergies were acting up. I'm standing in line, waiting for my mediocre-at-best school lunch, when some jerk bumps into me. Oh, come on. I do not need this right now. I turn around, prepared to let loose on whichever idiot wasn't looking where they were going (or, more likely, look a little annoyed and turn around again) when the jerk says something.

"Sorry, man. My fault."

Oh. Well, that's okay then, isn't it? Satisfied, I turned back around and went about my day. It wasn't until later that it struck me, how normal, how unabashedly human that little exchange had been. And that's just the thing - it was normal. It's normal for people to have common decency. It's normal to apologize for bumping into someone. And it's downright normal to accept such an apology. Humanity is normal, and these days it seems all too easy to forget that. Turn on the news and you get bombarded by the antics of this celebrity or that one, this politician or that one. It's sometimes hard to remember that the reason this is news is because it's not normal. In a time as 'interesting' as ours, with situations such as the current presidential election, it may feel like humanity is doomed to an early (and perhaps well deserved) grave. However, if you take a look at humanity as a whole and not just the outliers that make up our news broadcasts, if you examine the billions of interactions that happen daily between members of the human species, I feel like you simply can't believe that. We still have a chance, and a fairly good one at that.

The natural state of humanity, as I like to imagine it, is not, in fact, a savage beast purely out for personal gain. I believe every person has at least some seed of goodness within them. It's simple things, like apologizing for bumping into you, like nodding at you, simply acknowledging your existence, that prove this to me. We, as a species, care for and about one another. And not just the people close to us. That guy I mentioned earlier, who bumped into me? Never spoken to him. Haven't seen him since. Couldn't pick him out of a crowd. And yet, still, despite the fact that neither of us knew a thing about the other, he still saw fit to practice basic courtesy. Why? Because it's human. The same reason you feel a pang of guilt, perhaps, or pity, when you hear about some disaster happening to someone you met. You can't help it. You're human.

So what does all this mean? Why does it matter at all that people are good? So I apologize once in awhile. So what? Does it matter? Quite plainly, yes. It matters a great deal. Census takers in nearly every country throughout the world have found that the majority of citizens are, in fact, people. People with this seed of goodness within them, with the power to nurture it as they will. Human nature can and will prove to be the salvation of mankind. Because we are human, humanity has a chance.