Avisak Baishnab 

English 21007

The Limits of Humans 

In the novel Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn, we are introduced to a family of five. There are Emma and Amelie, who are twins, Mother, who is also pregnant, Mimi and our main character, Jane. They are on Houston St when suddenly an earthquake occurs. The family is frightened and looks for cover until a man shows up and brings them into cover. He leads them into a room with a small machine in it. With a sledgehammer, the man violently smashes the small machine and the earthquake comes to a halt. This man is later revealed as Nikolai Tesla, an engineer well known for his creations. The mother and Tesla chat as the mother asks a question, “What do you think of ghosts, Mr. Tesla?” Tesla responded with “Madam, I believe that everything is a possibility.” This later led me to wonder, what isn’t possible for humans? The more I thought about this idea the more I realized that humans are able to do a wide range of things but that there is also a small area in which we simply can not do certain things. Humans are not able to do many things but we have continued to invent and create things that allow us to do things that we weren’t able to do thousands of years ago.

For instance, flight. Humans alone do not have wings or are not able to fly but to overcome this obstacle, we invented the airplane which allows us to fly to other countries. Humans do not have many attributes that enable them to do certain things like other animals. Similar to how birds have wings in order to fly and how giraffes have longnecks in order to eat leaves from trees. Humans can not physically alter their body in order to achieve things like flight but instead we invent. Another example would be swimming across oceans. Humans are not physically able to swim across oceans due to several things like our body getting sore and lack of stamina. I only listed a few reasons but there are an enormous number of reasons why we can swim across the ocean. In order to overcome this obstacle, we invented boats which then allowed us to cross large bodies of water with ease.  Another thing that I believe that we will not be able to achieve is the complete exploration of outer space. I am not sure if space is infinite or not but I do know that it is so big that humans may never be able to reach it. If space is infinite then of course humans will never be able to fully discover and understand it but even if outer space is this one large sphere, humans may never be able to explore it due to things like life span. Most people only live up to 80 years but 80 years is not enough to explore even a fraction of space. 

In conclusion, I do believe that what Nikolai Tesla said is true to a certain extent. Some things are simply impossible for humans because of our own restrictions or due to infinity. Other than that, humans have always been able to adapt and create things that allow them to do things that they weren’t able to do before. Humans aren’t able to fly so we made planes and humans aren’t able to swim across oceans so we made boats.