Draft 5: Natural is not Always in Nature

2012 was a crazy time for me.  I was 7, free as a bird and living what I thought was “the life.”  “The life” consisted of Wild Kratts, friends, Wild Kratts, family, and Wild Kratts.  School was a breeze, I had good friends, and my life was pretty perfect.  I didn’t realize that there were people who couldn’t even have a life like me, because they were living the wrong one.

When I was younger my dad was my idol.  I would spend all my time with him and do whatever he did.  He used to watch a lot of medical documentaries for work and they were usually about recovering from an injury, how a deformity was overcome, and usually pretty uplifting things, until one day I saw something I didn’t even know was real.

On the screen, I saw a boy but he was a girl?  What?  As I kept listening, I realized that it was not odd, it was sad.  Devastating, actually.  Here this boy was stuck in a body that wasn’t his, and because he was brave enough to make a change, he was being ridiculed.  As my mind filled with questions,  I turned to my dad and he said, “It’s really sad.  He’s really a girl but he’s trapped in a boy’s body.”   He let out a sigh and said, “She’s helping herself, but some people don’t like that.”  But why?  What was so wrong?

If it was not clear before, I loved Wild Kratts.  What made me love it so much was not the funny characters, or the fantasy of it, but how it was about nature.  In nature, nothing is questioned.  It is all just being, and we take it as beautiful because it is natural.  

We do not do that for humans though?  There are occurrences in all of us that we may not all experience as individuals, but that does not mean they don’t still exist.  We do not all bloom like flowers, but we look at it as beautiful.  What makes our common race of humanity so different?

I think that day was when my innocence was really taken from me.  Up until that point I don’t even think I gave a second thought about gender, race, religion, nothing.  My friends were my friends because of their character and who they are.  

It seemed as though all those values we were taught when we were younger, suddenly did not apply when we became adults.  We always hear “spread love, not hate” but its funny how the people who are telling us can't follow it themselves. 

When we spew hate into this world, we are not able to bloom.  That is what makes us different from nature.  Nature has no ability to be hurtful, everything in nature is meant to be and its beautiful because it’s natural.  These occurrences like being transgender, or gay, or darker, or lighter, are also natural, but for some it is harder to see that.  

Wild Kratts not only taught me about animals and their lives, but it also taught me how to be open minded and loving to everyone around me.  Being yourself is natural, being forced to act like someone you are not for the sake of others isn’t.