The Measure of Another

So i wrote this as a response to an essay i stumbled upon online... I'm thinking of submitting it to the bend bulletin as an editorial piece, so if anyone has suggestions or thoughts i would love to hear them.

While on line a few days ago I stumbled upon a copy of Albert Einstein's essay, “The World as I See it.” Anyone who hasn't read this essay; I deeply implore you to search for it on the Internet or your local library, and for those of you who have already read it, I urge that you dig into it again and let his words soak into your mind. This brief essay draws from that work of his, and it is quite a sobering, short essay that should be looked at many times.
Many people already know the famous physicist for his theory of relativity and the equation E=MC², yet he contributed so much more to this world than he is typically acknowledged for by the general population. For example, Einstein wrote letters to President Roosevelt that described that German activities with enriched Uranium were taking place in the hopes that the Nazi's would create a super weapon. It is entirely plausible that without such assistance the events of the Second World War would have taken different turns.
Yet, even taking note of such events in this man's life seem to sell him short. As stated in his essay “The World as I See it,” Einstein is a firm believer in the idea of democracy, because it is one of the only systems of government in which a human is allowed to be all that he or she is. While Einstein did not specify entirely what it is that makes an human being an “individual,” it doesn't take a degree of philosophy to tackle this concept. A person is an individual in their own experiences and emotions. Each of us differ from one another in the ways that we think, speak, and react to the different circumstances that make up our lives. Through each of these aspects of ourselves that makes us different from one another, we contribute to the world around us. We do this by interacting with the people around us.
Einstein's essay is a pristine example of such a contribution; his essay shows him for what he really was. He was a human capable of individual thought and expression. He was someone who understood that he was something small in something big, but that he needn't be scared of his own size. And while it does not come through in his essay, we must know that Einstein was a man who at times was foolish, frustrated, infatuated, heartbroken, content, and downtrodden. We can know this because, setting aside every contribution to modern science he made, Albert Einstein was a human being. As history clearly demonstrated, he was capable of a higher level of thought than most, but he was a still a man who needed food and nurturing like the rest of us. Einstein saw hope in the idea of democracy. He could see something that would enable other human beings to recognize one another for all of our differences, and use these differences to help make a better society and world. But as much as he loved the differences between two humans, he abhorred humans become “idolized.” For a person to be looked at as more than a man was something to be avoided. I have to say that I ultimately agree with this idea.
When I look at the changes that different societies have gone through, I would say that humanity is getting closer to understanding its individual parts as something special and unique; albeit this change is happening at a painstakingly, slow rate. Yet, we as humans cannot seem to pull ourselves away from the concept of making a person more than what they are. We romanticize, we demonetize; we idealize, and satirize. This act of making a human much more than he or she is takes place within all walks of life: political candidates, next door neighbors, boyfriends and girlfriends, even the family pets face the possibility of being made into something more than their own existence. Perhaps this act is merely a by-product of the associative nature of the human mind, but in all ways this act is unfair to the needs and feelings of the object in question. To demonstrate this idea, I'll use the primary source for this essay: Albert Einstein. As I've already said, many people know this man for his contributions to modern science. No doubt that when his name was initially mentioned, the equation E=MC² briefly popped through some of the readers' heads. Yet, to simply summarize this man as his scientific contributions is unfair to the human being that he was. Or contrarily, to look only at his emotions and daily life does not do his existence justice, because the effects he has had on human life are vast, and--in all possibility--still rippling outwards to affect the future.
So why does any of this matter? Well I believe that this matters because I hope to one day be a history teacher, and I hope to show the future generations that history was much more than just a series of dates, wars, and economic factors. History is comprised of people who made invaluable changes to the way humans look at the world, and each of these people is worth far more than a couple page summary in the confines of a text book. Hopefully by showing people that who we are is just as important (if not more so) than what we do, we can begin to understand our past and future events with far greater clarity.
That is why this matters to me, but why should any of this matter to you, the reader? I hope that by reading this you will begin to see the people around you differently. I would hope that each of you who read this take a second or two out of your time, and really wonder about those around you whom you don't know very well. The kid who skateboards by your sidewalk in the afternoon, the mother who can't seem to stop her children from crying in the department store, the elderly man filling out forms in the D.M.V.; all of these people have lives that extend far beyond the brief moments that you see them. Each of those people that you briefly encounter are capable of all of the same feelings that you are. Each of them have dreams and needs. And while it would be nice to say that all of them have a life where everything is going well for them at this moment, chances are that someone that you see is struggling with something bigger than themselves. So please do not be so quick to judge, and please be quick to offer some assistance if you think somebody genuinely needs it. Your present life is affected under influences of many people who have made contributions, sacrifices, and mistakes in events past; how will you be effecting the future ahead?