An Essay on People: People means human beings in general or considered collectively. Humans are part of the people, each of us comprises the people and people are nothing but the whole world. Humans (homo sapiens) are social creatures, we are hardwired to make connections with others, we have evolved over the course of millions of years to develop a need to socialize with others because it makes us stronger. The reason why humans have been able to survive for long is because we have strength in numbers which simply means the people. Humans are the most populous and widespread species of primates characterized by bipedality ( the ability to walk on two legs) and large complex brains enabling the development of advanced tools, culture and language. We are highly social beings and tend to live in large complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms and rituals which bolster the human society, the world. Curiosity and the human desire to understand and influence the environment have motivated humanity’s development of science, philosophy, religion and other fields of knowledge. Humans are the only known species to have successfully populated, adapted to and significantly altered a wide variety of land regions across the world resulting in profound historical and environmental impacts. A tiger can kill a single person easily but he cannot do so with 10 people. Since the era of our ancestors, forming groups was the only way to survive the wild, they needed large groups to protect them. The ability to build tools definitely was a major factor in early human survival, but a single human, even with the tools was easy to hunt when separated from their group. Humans cannot live alone because our brains know that we need a pack to drastically increase our odds of survival. There is an urge to communicate in whatever way possible in all animal species. We are dependent on everything starting from plants to animals to other humans. The homo sapiens evolved through communities and not by living alone, and as a result centuries of evolution has designed a thought pattern subconsciously to dwell in groups. From an evolutionary perspective, humans were able to survive better when they were accepted as part of a group of people. For example, our ancestors had better access to resources and mating opportunities when they were part of a group. It says that no man is an island, we are social beings and we are born to interact with one another, we are used to that because we were never born alone but we were born with a family waiting for us. As the saying goes “It takes all types of people to make the world go round”, for example, the years 2020 and 2021 meant trying times and divisiveness for the world, we fought with an invisible virus and we are still fighting. Globally atleast 3.5 million people have died due to COVID- 19 pandemic, but we still remain in hope for 2022 because we are all working against the virus together with the faith that we are all in this together and we have become more resilient because of the support , love and care we have given and continuously giving to each other. Human beings are ultra social species and our nervous systems expect to have others around us. According to biology, neuroscience and psychology, our bodies actually tend to work better when we are around people, being lonely has been linked to worsen physical and emotional health, a lack of social support can directly affect our potential for experiencing happiness, we are built to seek social companionship and understanding because being around other people makes us healthier. Physiologically, not having a social support system is actually a source of chronic stress for our bodies, when people feel lonelier they have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol and that type of chronic stress raises the risk of cardiovascular disease and other challenges to health and wellness. Conversely our relationships with people can encourage behaviours that are good for us too, like eating right and exercising as simple as they may seem but which makes a big difference in our lives. So it makes sense that having fewer social ties is associated with more heart diseases, cancer and impaired immune functions as well as with worse recovery when it comes to those health problems. Research dating back to the 1970s suggests people with weaker social networks actually die younger than people who have more extensive social networks. Our brain works better when we work together and there’s a growing body of evidence that suggest our brains actually function better when we are interacting with others and experiencing togetherness. Social interaction is among the most complex functions humans brain perform, yet the interaction appears surprisingly easy. Research shows that listening and participating in a two-person conversation is actually less mentally taxing for the brain than giving or listening to a monologue. We all prefer to go through life with people, like the social baseline theory which suggests the human brain expects access to social relationships, that’s because those connections help lower potential risks one might face and lessen the amount of effort needed when it comes to a variety of scenarios, for instance if the objective is to build a house, there is literally less work for each individual if two or more people do it. When we come across people who challenges us and hurts us, we grow mentally because it is only through those people that help us broaden our mind and see the world from a positive perspective, taking it as opportunities for growth and transformation which can ultimately be a more poignant source of sustained happiness. That’s because having a diverse variety of emotional experiences including feeling hurt, angry, anxious or depressed expands our capacity to feel better too and that’s when our relationships with people outshine its benefits. We complain about the world getting worse day by day, but we are the ones causing the damage because we are the ones in it and not the aliens or an outside species or force destroying our planet. With the global population still on the rise, there is uncertainty about its long term trajectory due to changing rates of fertility and mortality. It took over 2 million years of human prehistory and history for the world’s population to reach 1 billion and only 200 years more to reach 7 billion, the current world population is 7.9 billion and is expected to reach 8 billion people in 2023 according to studies. Currently the world population is increasing by more than 90 million per year and that the strain this 7.9 billion people will put on the resources of the planet which are finite will motivate us to innovate and that apparently is progress. The progress of the last century has however created as many problems as it solved. One example, we managed with the green revolution to feed many more people than we previously thought we could, that allowed the world population to continue its explosion, but the consequences are only now coming home to roost, We have destroyed and exploited nature on an unprecedented scale, with over population: deforestation is on the rise, the chemicals we use in our agriculture have created vast ocean dead zones, glaciers are melting at a faster rate, half the world’s rivers and lakes are not fit to support life, fertile soils are declining, the CO2 emissions from industrialization contribute to climate disruption, the nutritional value of food that reaches our table is considerably less than that of the food we enjoyed just a few generations ago because we humans have become too greedy destroying the nature ,we have sucked the world’s aquifers and major rivers nearly dry. The list goes on as we have filled up our planet, the rising demand for resources has caused us to develop an increasingly complex system and such complexity makes the world we live in more vulnerable and less resilient and we the people are responsible for it. Most importantly, since each of us make the people, the society, the country and the world, we can makes small changes which will later contribute to bigger ones. As the saying goes “ a little drop of water makes a mighty ocean” even though we cannot undo the damage we have caused to our planet , but each of us can make the difference by trying to plant more trees, follow the three R’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, walk more drive less, educate ourselves and educate others to understand the importance and value of our natural resources, volunteer for cleanups in our community, conserve water because the less water we use, the less run off and wastewater that eventually will end up in the oceans, avoid plastic bags and opt for reusable shopping bags, using energy efficient light bulbs which will help in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, all this will help in combating climate change which will later make our home, our planet better. Last but not the least, people of different groups around the world think differently and act differently and as individuals we are all unique and we need to respect and love people whether they are rich or poor, irrespective of caste or religion, black or white, tall or short, humble or rude, kind or rude and whether we like them or not, because we all need each other and we are just helping each other as we walk towards our home. Wherever we are, whatever we do so, we desperately need people. Even people we love the most and the ones that loves us will still hurt us at one point of our lives because we are all imperfect beings, but at the end of the day there is no truer adage than “I cannot do this alone, I need them”. Psychology says that a part of human nature’s default mode is to be social because people have an innate and very powerful need to belong, we are dependent on people and people are dependent on us. We have to develop ourselves and also have to help people to the extent we can. Someday when we are old and gray we will not be able to recollect everything, but we will surely remember those people that made an impact in our lives, because it will be always a particular person who helped us to keep going, a particular person who loved us with all our flaws, a particular person who always looked up to us, a particular person who always trusted us, a particular person who always had our back, a particular person's rejection that taught us to love ourselves, a particular person's unlovable attitude that awakened the love within us, a particular person's kindness that made us realize that we should never be rude, a particular person's generosity that made us ponder upon how much we are really sharing with all of our hearts a particular person's rudeness that taught us to never treat others the same way we were treated, a particular person's pride that taught us to be always humble, a particular person's other side of the story that taught us to never judge what we only see, a particular person's ignorance that taught us to let go and move on, a particular person's impatient attitude that taught us to be really patient, a particular person who kept praying for us, a particular person for whom we needed to pray the most that changed us, It was because of all those people we have made this far. We are not on our own, at the end it will be all about what have we learned from all the people and what have we become, not what we have achieved and it will be all because of the people we've come across in our valleys and mountains, for all the people good and bad we've had, we have and we'll have. We need all kinds of people through this life’s journey, because Rome was not built by a single person but by many people and so is our lives.