Human Nature

I wonder if there is any such thing as human nature. In my experience, an action, deed or thought that will seem quite natural to one person will seem equally unnatural to another. Where one would speak, another would remain silence. Where one would run, another would fight. Where one would offer kindness and hospitality in any available form, another would turn a cold shoulder.

It's not uncommon to hear, "it's human nature to do this or that," but the more I see of people, the more I am convinced that there is no human nature, only the nature of being a human: needing food, drink, air, rest, et cetera. For every traumatic or life-shaping event you've ever experienced, another has experienced only a void in that area.

You can always tell when I've been doing my annual reading of 'David Copperfield' because I start to wonder things like this. I can't help it. There's such a variety of characters in that book, so many people who look at the same thing and come up with their own individual opinions and conclusions about it, so many stark differences between the warmth of Agnes Wickfield and the oozy sliminess of Uriah Heep, that I start to wonder whether humans, such as they are, have any real common ground with each other at all. I look at the people I know in my life and see the contrasts between them instead of the similarities.