An invitation to be human
Our humanity is not a problem to fix
Our humanness is not a problem to fix. I'm okay if that’s all you read of this. This is your invitation to stop here. Do less. Go in peace.
If you want a deeper exploration, please continue.
Be human; it’s okay
Our being human with all its ways of frustrating continual progress is not something to recover from. You, in all your limitations, are not a problem.
The world that comes to us through advertising and stories of growth coaches us in subtle and overt ways to hate our humanness. Our slowing down, aging, graying, imperfect bodies, and need for breaks are errors to resolve. Living under the burden of fixing the facts of our humanness is the unending false message we receive.
Incarnation
Being at peace with the tension between our ambition and the genuine restraints of our humanness is a sacred space. It’s the space that Jesus made holy by living in it. Christ as the incarnate God is a perfect depiction of this. Infinite, yet residing within human constraints. What a gentle reminder this should be. Or it could be if the endless scorn for it wasn’t so persistent from many advertising messages.
Jesus said, “Come to me, all who are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Not a superhuman end around to the burden, but rest in it. It’s almost like Jesus wasn’t smart enough to offer us five-hour energy. Poor pathetic Jesus. His profits suffered, and he didn’t even know how to improve them. What a bad example, Jesus. Un-American.
Sickness and messenger
I’ve had a few pesky physical issues in the last few months. The fact that these relatively minor issues have wreaked havoc on my mental state is a testament to the excellent health I’ve been blessed with up to this point in life. When the tidal wave of minor struggle hit me, I’d been sailing steadily, which made the relatively minor hiccups shocking.
Facing the limitations of an imperfect body has aggravated some of my expectations. And puzzled some people who have wanted things from me I couldn’t deliver. Nevertheless, I’m learning a lesson from this that many have already learned and adapted to.
This simple lesson has spilled over to a broader bit of learning about humanness generally.
Dealing with humanness
How do we deal with our shortcomings? Do we only see them as something to overcome, to effort against? Or are they an invitation to be at peace with reality?
Not only is it not something to fix, but our humanity isn’t something to grieve or undo. Furthermore, our individual uniqueness within our humanity isn’t something to smooth over or eradicate.
If our worth is something we are unsure of, we are vulnerable to thinking our humanity is a bother, a source of shame, and something we should dislike. So we’ll do nearly anything to overcome it. From pharmaceuticals and supplements to living a soul-crushing pace, we’ll strive for whatever will allow us to move past our humanity. Please let me be Superman, or I don’t want this life.
Nothing new under the sun
This has been the case for millennia, but the moment we wake up is a new day. It’s a day when we see the voices that propel us into many habits and actions that attack humanity in others and ourselves. The slow and vulnerable patterns of curiosity, awe, wonder, and resting in unknowing are odd against the backdrop of the voices that disapprove of humanness. Yet, centers of profit inspire us to buy our way out of limits as if it’s something we can do.
Attacking our very humanity will come dressed as maximum potential and productivity. These ostensibly good goals are beyond reproach and nearly unquestionable. After all, we’re facing the Russians, sloth, or some foe breathing down the neck of our unassailable Protestant work ethic. This is how the world works, after all. Demands for us to be better than our humanness are the truth we must adapt to, right? Some threat is gaining on us.
The Embrace
A way to embrace our humanity is to welcome limits as immutable facts. So, as your day begins, embrace limits and margins as a truth of how our life as a human will unfold.
Making limits an exercise or discipline will give us a baked-in appreciation for them being our lived truth. There are ways to do this. Below is one.
Haiku
Recently, I was given a short explanation of haiku. Here’s the description from a book I was reading called A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More:
Follow a three-line format, in which the first and last line have five syllables and the middle line has seven. Within these constraints, try and juxtapose two ideas or sensory images. These could be colors, sounds, flavors or temperatures, possibly set against emotions like love, fear, anger or joy. The juxtaposition should help to create the mood, or atmosphere, between the human and natural worlds, for example, or to reference a time of year or season without explicitly saying when it is.
What a fun and unproductive exercise that doesn’t happen on a screen.
Here’s an Instagram account that offers examples typed on a typewriter.
Haiku isn’t usually shared publicly. That detail alone was refreshing for the writer in me. Writing is often ONLY about sharing something publicly for approval.
Haiku is often about capturing the present moment’s experience. I wrote a haiku daily for a few weeks and realized the practice was helping me take back my mind for simple creative flourishing for its own sake. When writing one, I was the creator and sole witness to the present moment.
It was a moment I entered with understood severe limitations and restraints. Not only celebrating but defining the effort of writing a haiku. Given the limits of a haiku, it will only be so good. Yes, it’s a blank canvas, but like any actual canvas, it’s limited. So the pressure is off to be excellent beyond limits. This will only be so good, but because of the restraint will be surprisingly good too.
As I’ve written one each day, I have to be okay with it being less than what it could be. And I realized that’s a remarkable parallel to our humanness.
Be well, Feral Souls.