1000 Words on: Being Human

To “be human” includes that which is flawed, or undeveloped or less-than-perfect about who we are, individually and collectively. Alexander Pope said, “to err is human, to forgive divine.”, a reference to the state of being human and what we might do about it.

The significance of this truth, “to err is human”, is at the foundation of how we think about who we are. Unlike other examples of life that we see in nature, to err is uniquely human. Plants and animals seem to live true to their nature, congruent within their place in a complex eco-system. It is only the human who lives into the question of who we are, changing and inventing creatively as we move through time. Humans generate conditions that influence our existence and that of other life forms as well. We seem to have a say in story of who we are.

Culture and religion have offered different ways humans explain the flawed, imperfect and undeveloped parts of who we are. Through different lenses we see different interpretations who we are and why humans are so prone to err. One predominant religion tells the story of humans, relative to a divine God, having made a fatal sin, that of eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge, resulting in separating humanity from the perfection of the divine. It creates a moral explanation. We have sinned and therefore we are suffering. We cannot stop sinning and therefore need to redeem ourselves by turning our devotion to God, who can redeem us. Our failures are moral failures and make us sinners. It scares me to know that some of those who think like this believe that humanity deserves eternal life in a state of torturous suffering, hell. We are guilty before we are born.

I will offer a different explanation, through a lens that sees ourselves not as sinners who have failed to live up to the perfection of the divine, but as individuals who are born into a world, innocent. This world, the people in it, have not yet come to know how to meet our needs as children. It is our unmet needs that keep us from getting past our tendency to err. We inherit the messiness of what has come before us. Adults whose needs have not been met raising children whose needs they don’t know how to meet.

Carl Jung said, “Like a plant, which from a seed becomes an Oak tree, so humans become what we are meant to be…but we get stuck.”

William James said, “Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake…the human individual thus lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.” He calls it, “the habit of inferiority to our full self.”

The err of our ways is that we repeat self-defeating methods of living while yet to discover ways to which we can feel empowered and confident, able to claim the life that is ours, and that of humanity as well.

Unmet needs, particularly that of acceptance, undermine our ability to see and claim the right to the life that is ours to live, empowered with confidence and free to be ourselves. Instead, we often end up with low self-esteem, insecurities, fears, anxieties, guilt, anger and other emotions that create a subtext to our sense of self. We end up with negative beliefs about ourselves, not being good enough, attractive enough, depending on performance or an image to earn approval from the world around us. To err, is to live unaware of the truth of who we really are.

Overcoming this stuck-ness, these limiting beliefs, starts with giving value to the life that is ours. It really isn’t difficult to recognize our life as a miracle, or a miracle within miracles. We can appreciate and be amazed by the human experiences itself. To see, to taste, to smell, to feel and touch and hear the world through a body that functions beyond that of any machine. To feel emotions in response to the circumstances of life, to organize the world and ideas in such a way as to understand, to make sense of and see the order in the world around us. To grow and change and develop, to learn from experience, using memory and belief, and other tools to integrate what we experience into what we already know. The eye, the ear, the brain, the skin…we are spectacular walking organisms, capable of great pleasure and pain.

I only have 1000 words, so I will not expand on ways we can understand and appreciate the experience of living life. You do that…be awed!

This awe connects to our sense of worth. When we realize the value of this miraculous life, we find more ways to get “unstuck”. To be human has within it the divine, all our individual and collective potential. Some of us might need to stop judging ourselves, as deserving of hell, in order to discover the ways to know our divine potential. We can overcome limiting beliefs and the unresolved emotions of our past to see how free we are to become what we can.

To be human is to face a set of tasks from our experiences in childhood…to meet our own needs. Without blaming our parents or society, we can do for ourselves what wasn’t done for us.

To be human is to be born into a job that is unfinished and to do our part. It is to overcome our limitations, to value who we are, our place in humanity, and life itself.

While meeting our needs is not simple, it is do-able. These seven concepts represent the needs humans have. I will offer a more extensive explanation in the next 1000-word essay. 1. Safety 2. Guidance 3. Acceptance 4. Nurturance 5. Autonomy 6. Being Seen 7. Play.

Being human is forgiving our errs and limitations and embracing our miraculous selves!