The beauty and reality of being a messy human
It’s true. We are all messy humans. We’ve all got shadows, biases and blind spots.
We are each, ordinary and extraordinary people — a complex mix of thoughts, feelings, history, strengths, shortcomings, ups-and-downs etc. — on a winding path, always in the process of becoming, as we navigate through life.
We. Are. All. Works. In. Progress.
At what point in our lives did we get the message, perhaps subtly, to show up as finished products?
Polished…
Expert…
As if the years of formal education, additional courses along the road-of-life and perhaps too many books to count…pretty much complete our learning in any field…
As if our learned and lived experience at any point completed our development as humans…
We sometimes act as if we have our act together…as if:
“We’ve got this…”
That exterior shell…
We are all works-in-progress, not perfect, and that’s (gotta be) perfectly okay…
Part of this lifelong journey is being able to (authentically) be who we are at any given point, within some reasonable healthy bounds. When free to be more our true selves, we can potentially become fuller, richer versions.
We’ve all heard:
Without shadow there is no light.
Part of our messy humanness is our shadow side. To become better humans wherever we show up, means taking more conscious responsibility, developing and embodying (more of ) our whole selves — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Oh yeah…the bad and the ugly are part of the package…
Othering is a thing that keeps us stuck and polarized.
In this (passing) age of disintegration the bad stuff is projected out there and like Teflon, nothing sticks to us. Othering is the unfortunate damaging result. With more self-awareness, we can work at becoming more integrated and (re)own our imperfect shadows.
We cannot change others.
Oh…but we’ve all tried…haven’t we?
We can start on the inside with ourselves. And then listen and share a bit more…
Of course inner development is important. Kinda like motherhood?
Training, development, academic education and various conceptual, philosophical, experiential and spiritually-based programs can provide very helpful and meaningful learning that fosters inner development.
Looking through a transcontextual lens, we can also understand why the Inner Development Goals (IDGs,) if viewed as standalone programatic interventions or solutions that can fix or bolster the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — will also fall short. Advocated, like SDGs — as compartmentalized tick-box ways to acquire skills and develop higher consciousness, disconnected from the full always-changing-context-of-work and life — they’re invariably set up for sub-optimization.
Pervasive patterns for addressing overlapping meta-poly-perma crises (however we label them) keep us and our systems stuck, continually shifting the burden, potentially fixated on the latest holy grails promoted and consumed by thought leaders, organizations and institutions with the best of brilliant intentions.
Paradoxically — yet again these often become insular reductionist solutions.
That said, many practitioners and educators are genuinely doing good stuff in the name of inner development, bringing (or trying to bring) a (more) holistic approach. So, let’s not rush to judge, adopting yet another forensic scientific left brain-leaning-way that (inadvertently) reinforces mechanistic, divisive Industrial Age patterns that over emphasize intellectual hard proof.
Let’s find more and better ways to integrate and balance within contexts that are accessible to more people.
Of course, we all have functioning whole brains. Perhaps we can consider how to live into and develop more of our innate (latent) potential capacities, tapping into more of our right brain whole-person creative intuitive ways of perceiving, learning, navigating and collaborating. More holistic ways of being and learning will naturally embrace knowing and working with our unknowingness.
That is the real messy world we all experience in our own ways…informed by hard and warm data — ways of knowing.
Nested. Interconnected. And-and.
Gotta support many ways to naturally (re)contextualize— individually and collectively — wherever we show up and work-play-live. Calls upon us all to become more fluent and fluid navigating our whole real world contexts — ways to flow with the trajectory of our lives and (maybe) influence (systemic) change.
Inner development is also a natural lifelong process of zooming in and zooming out. Our ongoing inner development can become a more integrated and interwoven way of being — in all that we (choose to) do.
Accepting our messy humanness and our relational interconnectedness is a humbling learning journey.
This is often experienced as a vulnerable place to find ourselves — yet again, at various times, repeatedly in our lives…in our work.
We trip, we fall, we get up and we move forward. We learn how to laugh at ourselves. We let go a little…of our need to be right, to be righteous, to control the things that we really can’t control…
This is a recurring, layered hydra-headed theme that is further explored in three articles:
🔮 Being ‘Roughly Right’ is ‘Always’ and is ‘Never’ Good Enough
When we accept what is, we can begin to discover what might be possible…
Increasingly we hear an inner voice to be authentic, that it’s ok to be vulnerable…in fact, preferable…
Sometimes this still poses a double bind…an internal conflict…or…an external slap-on-the-wrist…
On the one hand…expected to project a strong, confident demeanour…
On the other hand…expected to accept our limitations and disclose our vulnerable inner experience.
Another paradox. What it means to be human…coming to terms with all that:
There is much that I and we really don’t (yet) and may never know. The more I and we know…the more I and we realize how much more there is to know. Isn’t it best to peacefully accept that reality?
Faced with complex, interconnected, layered entangled problems means that no one of us has definitive all-encompassing answers…
We hold pieces…sometimes big pieces, sometimes small…
Whole pictures are (more often) bigger than any one of us…
And so when it comes to the big hairy problems, we can potentially make much more progress when we let go of our need, whether internally or externally imposed, to have such airtight perspectives — to be so right…on (any) complex subjects…
We can make better progress when we break out of the binary boxes and either-or dualistic thinking that still too often keeps us trapped. We can work together:
🔮 Being collaborative
🔮 Being creative
🔮 Being curious
🔮 Sometimes leading…
🔮 Sometimes following…
🔮 Sometimes with clearly designated roles ’cause that’s what the work requires…
🔮 Increasingly, as we dig in and find our flow, it’s no longer obvious who’s leading; it becomes less important.
Life and work are living labs. In essence, we are always enrolled in the school of life. We never truly graduate. There is no diploma, degree or certificate that demonstrates final completion. Each new learning experience, every failure and even the triumphs are a test of our humanity…of our humility.
Paradoxically, when we accept and embrace our messy humanness, we make space for our inner beauty to blossom and shine through. When we let go a little, making room for others’ gifts to shine, immersing ourselves in the messiness of real collaboration — perhaps then…we can flourish…develop more deeply…and find more joy:
🔮 Make more of a meaningful difference in our world…
🔮 Uphold higher collective standards…
🔮 Guided by a moral compass…that reasonably balances mutual needs
🔮 That helps us navigate forward…
🔮 In the roughly right direction…
🔮 For the common[s] good…
Let us all unlearn what no longer serves and learn how to learn through collaborative interplay…
When we give ourselves permission to be the works-in-progress we truly are…no matter who we are…no matter what role(s) we hold…possibilities can open up.
Each and all of us…ordinary, extraordinary…with gifts differing can make progress…individually and together.
Learning how to build meaningful collective futures calls upon us to show up in the present in ways that are (more) conducive to a life-affirming future…to be(come) reasonably congruent walking-the-talk or being the change.
The mechanistic Industrial Age didn’t nurture those ways of being…and continue to make it hard to deal with this stuff in ways that help us get on with it…especially in the face of overlapping challenges and uncertainty.
We can care deeply and still potentially become less attached to our well-honed perspectives. Our views do not represent all that defines us. How we think and see things, at any given point, doesn’t define (all of) who we are…Does it?
It seems that modern western Industrial society has commodified and objectified life so thoroughly…whereby humans — the things we say and do — are also somehow branded as products. What happens when we, as ‘products of society,’ internalize and further normalize these patterns?
Being human is an ever-developing, dynamic living process. ‘Human being’ embodies more than human thinking, human feeling and human doing…We are always more than our thoughts, feelings, ideas and behaviour…
The story of separation that artificially disconnected us from one another, nature and all living beings, also separated (dis-integrated) us from our whole selves.
When we wall off or push down aspects of our humanness (feelings), we also experience and observe unintended consequences.
Idealizing altruism with the expectation to park one’s ego, while understandable, might inadvertently make more space for our shadows. Those unwanted parts that we judge as selfish, often simply go underground. Our clever shadows and well-honed defences are brilliant at projecting the things we reject. Unresolved conflicts and dissonance have a sneaky way of making others the objects of what is wrong in our world.
This can create perfect conditions for othering, dysfunctional polarization and wheel-spinning.
A variation on the famous Pogo line:
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
This lingering compartmentalization makes it hard to reconcile internal conflicts. The ‘shoulds’ and judgements that we impose on ourselves and others, might inhibit healthy ways of working through our messy human stuff as a normal matter of course.
…some of the time…or more often than we realize…
That’s also why we wrestle with conceptual frameworks that call for a shift from ego to eco. Enlightened self-interest makes the space for and-and — our mutual, interdependent interests towards the common[s] good. The life long journey — the layering of varied learning experiences whereby we can embody more wholeness and interconnectedness — is nonlinear and nonbinary.
There are diverse cultures and wisdom traditions that understand and are more naturally-rooted in these ways of (inter)being and (inter)becoming. For example, the oft-cited Zulu Ubuntu, sometimes translated as “I am because we are” or “I am because you are” — reflects a natural honouring of our lives and our inherent interdependence.
Perhaps those needy driving individualistic ego needs become less needy and driven, as we’re nourished by intrapersonal and interpersonal ways of being that serve us all much more meaningfully.
We can restore, (re)own and honour out deeper Indigeneity — the wisdom that we (many of us) lost somewhere along the way.
Some of this stuff can flow naturally. It will feel better. It will feel good.
As this way of being yields a sense of wellbeing and better, more meaningful outcomes…it might catch on — more as a warm invitation rather than an (externally) imposed righteous should…
It might become common[s] sense with a functional inside-out and outside-in moral compass…
“It always looks impossible, until it’s done.”~ Nelson Mandela
Are we there yet?? The impatience and performative pressure to arrive at a finished destination, to be fully educated and evolved, to declare hard polished credentials, to demonstrate measurable results and high marks — is another leftover imbalance of a mechanized Industrial Age.
We are not programmable machines. We are not branded products.
What’s seemingly impossible is unimpossible. It can and must become possible along with more holistic qualitative criteria on which to guage worthwhile progress.
Perhaps as more of us traverse these paths we’ll experience more authentic joyfulness — intrinsically fulfilling ways of living and working. We might increasingly realize that our driven egos haven’t really been feeling deeply fulfilled for quite some time…and we just didn’t know what we were missing…
We might experience more whole and wholesome ways of being while cultivating lives worth living and work worth doing.
Instead of tip-toeing gingerly around the tough issues, sometimes we must excavate deeply, courageously owning our own experience and the need to process and integrate what we’re learning. In doing so, others may feel welcome to delve a little more authentically into their own hearts too. The result is a gift we give ourselves and share with others. This kind of inner work is so important to heal ourselves and our relationships. May we all learn how to listen to that inner voice, gain awareness and reach out to others to build bridges to greater understanding.
As we navigate this ongoing (un)learning unstitutional journey, we not only acknowledge this, we often celebrate it and invite you to celebrate it with us. In doing so, we work through the inevitable, invariable bumps. We all learn. We unleash the playful, creative spirit and joyfulness that adds richness and resilience, strengthening us for the challenging road ahead.
We discover more ‘aha’ moments. Our ‘aha’ moments often arrive in unexpected ways…
When our heart-present-centredness is open, ‘aha’ flashes of insight greet us…sometimes felt like a whack-on-the-side-of-our-heads…sometimes like a crappy learning experience we would have preferred to skip.
Sometimes we recognize an old familiar ‘duh’ — deja vu — and we feel that sinking dismay:
“Haven’t I already learned this? Been there…done that!”
Sometimes insights arrive like profound openings to whole new ways of seeing.
When we are ready and open, ‘aha’ moments might waft in like a gentle breeze…
When we’re not quite ready… ‘aha’ insights might still force their way into view and suddenly the revelational floodgates burst open.
Primed and ready-or-not, sometimes a reframing or (re)contextualizing of what we think we know, is too compelling to ignore or brush aside.
We’ve been conditioned, to varying degrees, by success criteria that emanate from the same story of separation that many of us no longer accept…yet there are so many layers to this…and it still bites us in the ass…
The planet, humanity and all living beings don’t need the old standards of success and progress that got us into this existential soup. We are discovering…uncovering ways of navigating…being the change…that don’t require the kind of illusionary heroic brilliance that invariably manages to separate us — no matter how hard we try, and often because of how hard we try — to accomplish important things.
Increasingly more of us are rethinking and reframing what is truly important — what matters most and what can make a meaningful difference in our lives, families, communities, work and across all domains of society.
“When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it’s because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don’t want to acknowledge.”
“Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behaviour, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.”
“When we flee our vulnerability, we lose our full capacity for feeling emotion.”
“We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.”
~ Gabor Maté
Wherever we are on this journey…to let go of the toxic drivers that create dis-ease…and open space that enables more of us to contribute — is a departure from what has become so engrained in society.
Making and holding space for us to help one another, build our collective creative capacity — our collaborative muscles — flows from a different kind of energy. Given the engrained, normalized ways of doing things, this can feel really counterintuitive.
We (all) want to make a difference, for our efforts to matter, to be heard and understood — and it’s gotta be okay (for us all) to experience feelings and needs too. ’Cause when we deny our inner experience…our shadows invariably manage to take up more space…
Ya — those ego needs creep up and swell. When this happens it’s one huge blind spot that we often deny…not because we’re evil. We just don’t wanna believe that about ourselves, especially when we also care so passionately about a higher common purpose that’s supposed to transcend those personal ego needs.
Being human means none of us are exempt from this, and no matter how aware and attuned we become…this work is never completely done. More of us are learning with every passing day — sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully — how to live into our natural social interdependence. Interbecoming is an ongoing dynamic process…on the way toward deeply experienced interbeing.
Being human — whoever and wherever we are along our evolutionary path — also means we are not 100% congruent all the time. If we can find ways to accept and graciously own that, maybe we can individually and collectively make more progress…
🔮 Can we value one another and our respective contributions without the need to surpass or outshine one another?
🔮 Can we strive to be(come) better, fuller version of ourselves, without the performative driving need to prove and the aching sense of never being quite enough?
As these ‘aha’ moments accrue and collide within and between us — eventually, potentially and exponentially we might unblock some of the most insidious barriers hiding in plain sight. For all kinds of compelling reasons that we all care about — sooner than later would be good!
There is so much work for us all, with gifts differing and overlapping.
Collaborating co-creatively will become more natural and doable — as we collaboratively co-create. We learn through those natural iterative spirals of observation, reflection, experimentation and adaptation.
In essence — we mindfully learn in-the-doing.
Messy humanness captures this simple existential reality:
🔮 What being human means — for all of us
🔮 Being (more fully) who we are…
🔮 Individually becoming and collectively interbecoming more fully human
🔮 Contributing toward a wellbeing society and flourishing living planet, present-centred with a long view for many generations to come
And that, in a nutshell, excavates the deep-rooted meaning underlying the hashtag messyhumanness, a recurring theme, which has been popping up with increasing frequency over the past few years or so. More reflections will follow as our work unfolds and evolves.
Are you dancing with your messy humanness? What are you observing?
*This article was updated again May 2024, reflecting additional perspectives and ongoing action research, as we continue to observe, listen and adapt — indeed a humbling learning journey for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze and support collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They portray a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work.
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