Humans and Humanity
What does it mean?
I had started writing a different article that wasn’t working when I realized my rationale wasn’t right.
There is no one way to be a human.
To be human is to be you, in your body, existing in the world around you as best as you can. At least, that’s what I think it is, now that I’ve adjusted my thinking.
Being human, then, can mean and be something completely different for you than it is for me.
And further, being human means you can change yourself constantly, as you react to the world around you, what you learn, what you think, what you feel, what you experience.
Which leads me to humanity. I think the challenge for humanity is to exist together with all the millions of different humans, with their different values, judgments, priorities, thoughts, goals, etc., etc.
Me as a Changing Human
When I was younger, being human meant pushing my body to do adventurous and exciting things, to compete, to give all I had to a sport or an activity. It meant jamming into life as many experiences as I possibly could.
Then I began to throw myself into my career and priorities changed. I changed. My views on what a human should be, changed.
My competitiveness was channeled into being the best I could be in my research field. I worked with older people, learned all I could from them, read constantly, challenged my ideas, pushed myself to work longer hours so I could achieve more. These weren’t all personal achievements, I wanted the information I was discovering to be out in the wider community, often it was working to get information to others via writing, interviews, talks, workshops.
Then life changed, and my idea of being a human changed again. My previous life stopped through illness. Everything I thought made me a functioning adult and a useful member of society, I was unable to do. I had to re-frame what being a human meant again…but this time, it was a conscious choice within strict, and often unforgiving, boundaries.
2020 and Humans
That happened to me in 2005. But as 2020 unfurled, it seemed as if the whole world was being asked to re-frame themselves. The parallels between my viral illness and the 2020 global pandemic were eerily similar.
When I began to write this article, I was assuming that everyone would need/want to change their life. That others would see this time as a chance to re-frame what it means to be human, and that they may also come up with a similar definition to me.
I couldn't be more wrong!
Sometimes being human means fear — of change, of love, of softer emotions, of feeling, of hate, of differences, of others.
Sometimes being human means amassing great power and/or control of others.
Sometimes being human means following others who call to your soul, and following them with zeal and passion.
Sometimes being human means not thinking for yourself but following society’s rules and regulations to the letter.
Sometimes being human is following a pathway that was shown to you by someone else.
Humans don’t all have the same values.
Humans don’t all have the same moral code.
Humans don’t all have the same priorities.
Humans don’t have to care a hoot about others.
Humans don’t even have to care about the earth that they stand on.
For me, that’s a huge challenge. It makes me stop and reassess my definition of human, and makes me wonder how humanity can possibly survive when such disparate views of being human exist.
Humans have free will. Sometimes I wonder if that will be the death of humanity. Although, I hope that humanity can find ways to embrace all humans with love, compassion, and hope… and that all humans may accept that in their own way.
