BEING HUMAN
WHAT DOES IT MEAN
TO BE HUMAN
We use the word all the time.
Human.
Human nature.
Human behavior.
Human experience.
Human connection.
Human potential.
But how often do we actually stop to ask what we mean by it?
As an experience.
What is happening when you are Being Human?
You think.
You feel.
You act.
You have.
You are.
Everything else seems to move through, around, between, and because of those experiences.
So that is where I begin—
By defining a system of how we experience life.
What I call the Five Freedoms of Being Human:
THINK. FEEL. ACT. HAVE. BE.
They are not instructions for how to live.
Nor are they a formula for becoming some vague sense of “better.”
They are five areas of focus.
THINK
You think all day.
About what happened.
About what might happen.
About other people.
About yourself.
About what something means.
About what you should do next.
But a thought appearing in your mind and a thought being yours are not necessarily the same thing.
Some thoughts were taught.
Some were repeated or inherited.
Some came from people you trusted.
Some came from systems you barely noticed were teaching you.
Some began as somebody else’s answer and eventually became something you stopped questioning.
So when I say THINK, I am interested in more than whether you are thinking.
I am interested in:
What are you thinking?
Where did it come from?
Do you agree with it?
Have you ever examined it?
And if you did…
Would you still choose it?
FEEL
Human beings feel.
Sometimes before we understand why.
Sometimes in ways that make perfect sense.
Sometimes in ways we wish we did not.
We learn very quickly that some feelings are easier for some people to accept than others.
Be positive.
Calm down.
Don’t be angry.
Don’t worry.
You shouldn’t feel that way.
Get over it.
Sometimes we get so busy deciding whether a feeling is acceptable that we stop paying attention to what the feeling actually is.
FEEL is not an instruction to obey every emotion.
It invites you to recognize that the experience is happening.
Before you explain it or correct it.
And before somebody else decides what it means.
What are you feeling?
What happens when you notice it without immediately turning it into a verdict about yourself?
ACT
Action is visible.
It is the part other people can see.
What you said.
What you did.
What you chose.
What you avoided.
What you started.
What you stopped.
But action does not begin at the start of the act.
Something happened before it.
A thought.
A feeling.
An assumption.
A habit.
An expectation.
A fear.
A decision.
Maybe an impulse you never consciously examined.
So ACT raises Questions that are larger than:
What did you do?
It asks:
Did you choose the action?
Did you react?
Were you trying to produce an outcome?
Were you trying to prevent one?
Were you doing what you wanted—or what you thought you were supposed to do?
And perhaps one of the most useful Questions:
What becomes possible between what happens and what I do next?
HAVE
We spend enormous amounts of Human life thinking about what we have.
Money.
Time.
Relationships.
Opportunities.
Health.
Work.
Possessions.
Status.
Choices.
And also what we don’t have.
Sometimes HAVE looks material.
Sometimes it is much less obvious.
Do you believe you can have peace without earning it?
Success without suffering for it?
Time that belongs to you?
A boundary someone else dislikes?
A life that does not make sense to everyone watching it?
An opinion that differs from the people you love?
The experience of having develops long before we consciously decide what we believe we deserve, can receive, are allowed to keep, or must give away.
So HAVE is not simply about acquiring more.
It is a place to Question your relationship with enough, access, ownership, receiving, expectation, limitation, and possibility.
BE
And then there is BE.
Perhaps the simplest word.
Perhaps the hardest to separate from everything we have attached to it.
Who are you?
The answer may show up fast.
A name.
A profession.
A relationship.
A role.
A history.
A personality.
A diagnosis.
A success.
A failure.
A category.
Something somebody once told you about yourself.
But those answers describe something about you.
Are they the same as being you?
What remains when the roles change?
When the job ends?
When somebody’s opinion of you changes?
When you change your mind?
When the version of yourself you worked very hard to become no longer fits?
BE is where I become especially interested in the difference between identity and experience.
Between what you call yourself—
and the Human who is here to notice it.
FIVE AREAS. ONE HUMAN.
These experiences are easy to separate on a page.
Human life rarely separates them so cleanly.
What you think may affect what you feel.
What you feel may influence how you act.
What you believe you can have may factor into who you allow yourself to be.
How you are being may change what you notice.
One decision can move through all five.
One relationship can touch all five.
One rule.
One belief.
One loss.
One opportunity.
One Question.
That is one reason I keep returning to:
THINK. FEEL. ACT. HAVE. BE.
The value is not in memorizing five words.
The value is in having five lenses for viewing when something in your experience deserves a closer look.
WHERE DOES YOUR AUTHORITY LIVE?
There is another Question underneath all five.
Who gets to decide?
Who gets to tell you what to think?
Who gets to tell you what you should feel?
Who determines what action is acceptable?
Who tells you what you may have?
Who gets to define who you are?
The answer is not always:
me.
We live with other Humans.
We participate in relationships.
We work inside organizations.
We live under laws.
We inherit cultures.
We use technologies.
We depend on systems.
Consequences, responsibilities, agreements, limitations, and realities cannot simply be thought away.
So I am not interested in pretending Humans exist without influence or constraint.
I am interested in something more precise:
Within everything influencing me, what still remains “me”?
That Question is at the center of much of my work.
FREEDOMS
I call THINK, FEEL, ACT, HAVE, and BE the Five Freedoms of Being Human.
The freedom I am interested in is fundamental.
The freedom to notice.
To Question.
To interpret.
To reconsider.
To respond.
To recognize what is happening within your own experience.
And to become more conscious of where you are participating in it.
You may not control everything that happens to you.
But it is worth asking:
What within this still belongs to me?
BEING HUMAN WITH OTHER HUMANS
Being Human does not happen alone.
Even when we are physically alone, much of what we think, feel, do, have, and believe about ourselves has developed in relationship with other people.
Parents.
Partners.
Friends.
Teachers.
Leaders.
Coworkers.
Communities.
Strangers.
People we admire.
People who hurt us.
People whose approval mattered.
People whose rejection mattered even more.
Human relationships create some of our most meaningful experiences.
They also create some of our strongest assumptions.
What does love require?
What does loyalty require?
What does kindness require?
What does disagreement mean?
What does somebody else’s disappointment require from me?
Can I understand another Human without agreeing with them?
Can I care about someone without surrendering myself?
Can two Humans experience the same relationship differently—and both experiences still be real?
Being Human gets especially interesting when another Human is involved.
BEING HUMAN INSIDE SYSTEMS
Humans create systems.
Then we live inside them.
Families.
Schools.
Workplaces.
Religions.
Economies.
Governments.
Technologies.
Social norms.
Rules.
Processes.
Categories.
Some systems make Human life possible.
Some make it easier.
Some protect.
Some organize.
Some create opportunity.
Some become outdated.
Some produce harm.
Most are more complicated than a simple judgment of good or bad.
But because Humans created them, I believe Humans remain free to Question them.
What was this system created to do?
Who does it serve?
What assumptions does it make about the people inside it?
What does it reward?
What does it discourage?
What happens when following the system becomes more important than the Humans the system was supposed to serve?
And perhaps most importantly:
Where, inside this system, do I remain Human?
BEING HUMAN WITH TECHNOLOGY
Technology has added another participant to the Human experience.
We increasingly think with machines.
Work through machines.
Create with machines.
Ask machines.
Receive answers from machines.
Allow algorithms to influence what we see, consider, buy, believe, and sometimes even how we understand ourselves.
I am not interested in reducing that relationship to either fear or enthusiasm.
I am interested in Questioning it.
What am I asking technology to do for me?
What authority am I giving it?
What do I know because I examined it—and what do I know because a system returned an answer?
Does convenience change how willing I am to Question?
What happens when an artificial intelligence can provide an answer before I have asked myself what I think?
The technology may change.
The Human Question remains.
THERE MAY NOT BE A FINAL ANSWER
I don’t know that Being Human is something we eventually figure out.
I’m not sure I would want it to be.
Maybe part of Being Human is that the experience keeps changing as we do.
What mattered at twenty may not matter at fifty.
An answer that once helped us may eventually become something we need to question.
A belief that once felt certain may become less certain.
A version of ourselves may end.
Another may begin.
Maybe the goal is not finally understanding yourself so thoroughly that nothing can ever surprise you again.
Maybe there is value in remaining available to yourself.
Available to notice.
Available to reconsider.
Available to Question.
Available to recognize that you are still here—
THINKING.
FEELING.
ACTING.
HAVING.
BEING.
And still capable of looking again.
THINK FOR YOURSELF
You can learn from anyone.
A teacher.
A parent.
A scientist.
A philosopher.
A spiritual tradition.
A book.
A therapist.
A friend.
A system.
An artificial intelligence.
Me.
Answers really can come from anywhere.
But there is something I do not believe should be outsourced completely:
Your Questioning.
Listen.
Learn.
Consider.
Explore.
Change your mind.
Keep what makes sense.
Question what doesn’t.
And when someone gives you an answer—
including me—
you are still allowed to ask another Question.
Think FOR Yourself.