We who refer to ourselves as Homo sapiens are the greatest enigma in all of the known universe. We are capable of rising to the highest pinnacles of heroism. Our psyches can soar like eagles on our spread wings into the stratosphere of sublime glory.

But we can also sink into the substrata of culpability in a manner so infamous it must transcend the capacity for evil of all the demons of hell.

What unimaginable force or circumstance or combination of undefined ingredients has been so fatefully combined in order to create this titanic and inexplicable dichotomy that defines humanity? What unnatural coupling of opposing forces has been required to produce us? Are we mere pawns in some cosmic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness:

It is only humanity who possess the ability to be both demon and angel. No explanation can truly begin to even approximate a profound or insightful enough answer that can allows us to fully understand either the origin of or the ultimate outcome of this cosmic contradiction that has spawned out of the stardust of the universe and which has been made manifest in every human culture since the dawn of time.

Our complex and unfathomable composition has led to an imbalance, a permanent state of unpredictability.

We are at once colossal destroyers of our world and magnificent creators. The very Gods we have created to account for our own existence tremble before that hybrid mystery known a humanity.

We know in the very depths of our universal soul that it must ultimately be by our own hand that we write the concluding chapter to the saga of our own existence.

How will this strange odyssey end? By what arrogant tumidity do we dare to postulate a God who can forgive the gargantuan perfidy of man's transgressions against the life forms who share with him this small blue world when we ourselves are all but incapable of forgiving one another?

Can we whisper enough “Mea culpas” to even begin to tip the scales even so slightly toward our own redemption? Dose anyone walk this earth who does not carry the stigma of quilt by virtue of our own complicity?

There are no platitudes we can speak that are insightful enough to validate the sufferings we have caused. Even the mighty river of time cannot carry the cargo of our transgressions out of the gallery of human suffering or obliterate the memory of our own perfidy.

And yet we have the capacity to sacrifice our very lives for others. We carry within the potentiality to comprehend the ultimate mysteries of the universe. We create music that transcends the stars and permeates the outer limits of time and space.

We are cognizant of the existence of beauty and we can love to the degree the angels themselves must envy.

And so we are and continue to be the ultimate sign of contradiction who carry within ourselves the answer to our own existence, its meaning and its final resolution.