To Be Human

Question: If you think you are so dull in this typical, social sense, do you consider yourself to be truly living? What does it mean to you to be alive?

Answer: This is all I think about. The answer is vast and never-ending and it evolves everyday. That’s half the fun. Read on for some potential answers I’ve discovered lately.

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It is a wonderful relief to know that if your eyes are open and you are truly willing to find joy, beauty, and love, you will see it no matter where you are looking.

Up in the sky, tucked away in the fingernail shaped moon when it’s only just become visible. Right next to you, in the bus driver who pulls over on the side of the street so you and your friend can get on, because he sees you running and knows you won’t get to the stop in time. On the asphalt in front of you, when you watch the shadow of a falling leaf dance on the ground before making contact with its creator.

There is a joy in being the observer, rather than the doer. In Sanatan Dharma, there is the belief that we, as humans, are instruments upon which Bhagwan can pluck strings to carry out the workings of the universe. Upon acceptance of the idea that you are not the ultimate ‘doer’, one can experience a great deal of peace.

To make this idea less abstract, less philosophical, think of every party you’ve ever been to. Which ones did you enjoy more - the ones you planned and executed, or the ones where you just had to show up and celebrate? Or when going to concerts - would you rather be on the stage or in the pit? 

Surely, there is value and beauty in being the creator, the one in control, especially when you pull it off well but there is an undeniable comfort and lack of stress when you are not the one in charge. Adopting a similar mindset when analyzing the complexities of life can really allow one to feel content and grateful. Somehow, this acknowledgement allows me to feel more alive and present.

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I was on the phone with my friend a few weeks ago, and we were skipping from topic to topic, when he asked me, if given the opportunity, would I want to be reborn as something other than a human?

I considered it. I could be a beaver - alternate between pursuing architecture my whole life and lazing around, floating on my back in the water. I could be a bird, experience the world from above, chasing warm weather and worms. I could be a lioness, the indomitable top of the food chain, a constant winner fueled by hunger and speed and a need to be the best.

But to be human? How could I ever give that up? When I can spend my whole life philosophizing, or making the worst mistakes, or falling in love, or learning? I can read a history book and come close to understanding hundreds and thousands of people before me. I can walk around museums and pretend I understand the real people who were once invisible commoners in old society, and are now hidden in plain sight by way of their paintings and sculptures. I can listen to songs and be transported to the countries and eras during which they were composed, but more truthfully, be transported to the first time I heard the song and pretend I’m still friends with the person who introduced it to me.

The most vital part of being a human is coming as close as we can to understanding other humans. I don’t want to give that up. The risk is as high as the reward. It’s a constant struggle with no easy answer, but where is the thrill in doing easy things?

I told him as much, and then proposed a new question - if you were offered the chance to be immortal, would you take it?

Because I would. Sure, you bring up endless suffering and facing apocalyptic conditions yadda yadda but consider - endless growth and knowledge!

My other favorite thing about being human is learning and that is just as much of an infinite, gargantuan task. There is so much to be known and understood and there is not a person alive that can claim they know everything. I dream of coming close to being that person, to walking the halls of the Nalanda and Alexandria libraries. 

Answers to questions I’ve never even thought to ask lie just out of reach, always, and if I had all the time in the world I would pursue every single one. I could learn every language, how every coffee flavor tastes, how to be an urban planner, how to mimic every bird call, become an archaeologist, direct a movie, own a bookstore, renovate houses - I could do it all. Things I can’t even imagine, I haven’t even heard of. I salivate at the thought. 

To be human is to grapple with the fact that you do not have all the time in the world, and yet to live as though you do.

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I think about my mom a lot. I think about her at my age, younger than me, older than me, as she is right now.

Almost all my friends have heard me say, at least once, that I seem to find close friendships with people who are reminiscent of my mom in some way or another.

It’s true. I see her in some of my best friends, in students I’ve taught, in books that I read, in songs that we’ve sent each other, and movies that she played when I was in elementary school.

I don’t see her in myself.

I hear her, however. When I take charge of a room. When I redirect people. When I push for better. When I say something critical. I hear her in my voice.

She has always been a leader, a manager, the one in charge. Who else would I emulate?

I have seen a lot of rhetoric on social media about daughters wishing they were never born so that their mothers could live a more full, satisfied, free life. These posts make me feel terribly selfish because I’m afraid I have never once felt that way. Sure, partly because I am thankful for the gift of life, but also just because I want her to be my mother, and only her. I get irrationally jealous at the idea of her having a daughter that’s not me and I feel ill at the idea of not being her daughter. 

How strange is it that someone can seemingly not ‘get it’ at all and also be one of the only people on earth who will ever fully understand me? Does she feel the same way about me? Probably. Logically speaking, there are so many more things that I just don’t understand the way she does, even by pure virtue of having existed longer.

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I’ve had these ‘visions’ for a few years now. They’re like motifs, really. Graphic symbols and montages that my mind writes, directs, and produces to reflect how I’m feeling about life at the moment.

When I was in senior year, it was this recurring vision of me holding a microphone up to my mouth and then biting off the top of it. I suppose in those days I wasn’t feeling heard. Or possibly, I wasn’t saying the things I really needed to say. Another one - I run and run and run under the spray of sprinklers. I’m not able to stop. My hands are open, my feet are slipping in the mud, my hair is heavy. I’m crying, but I don’t have to feel it or worry about it if everything is wet anyway.

These days, the motion picture goes something like this:

With much effort, I pry my mouth open. I have to use my hands to literally unhinge my bottom jaw. My hands reach into my throat, scrambling for something. My fingers catch on a bunch of letters - the sort of alphabet magnets we used to stick on our fridge. I yank the letters out. They glide around until they settle into their homes. They spell out “everything happens for a reason.”

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I’m sitting in the best people-watching spot on campus. When you sit here, and it’s sunny out, and campus is peacefully busy - life happens. All the things that you normally pass by, all the moments that normally pass you by - they don’t have to go anywhere when you sit here. You perch up here, and you could very well be invisible. People you know, people you don’t - they all walk past and not one looks your way. I don’t say this in the upsetting, lonely sort of way, but rather in the third-person omniscient narrator sort of way. In the “if you think about it, the painter is also a part of the picture, even though they aren’t the subject,” sort of way.

Let me paint a picture for you.

Three pairs of grandparents are in front of me, dressed in sarees and collared shirts. They’re accompanied by two parents and one child. One of the grandmothers is armed with an iPad. She pauses every few moments to take pictures of the trees, of the grass, of the benches. Smiling the whole time.

As I watch, I’m thinking of her as she might have been 20 years younger, 40 years younger, at my age. Did she watch the world with the same smile and wonderment? Does this campus remind her of somewhere else or is it like nothing she’s ever seen? What was the first thing she ever captured on an iPad camera? How did she feel when the shutter button clicked?

As my mind wanders, the other two grandmothers call her off in a different direction. She closes the iPad and leaves it with the child.

My eyes are drawn to another scene playing out some 40 feet away. Two girls are flawlessly enacting complex routines with a Chinese yo-yo. They are agile and sprightly and reveling in their youth in a way I support vehemently. It’s inspiring to watch.

A squirrel politely sits next to me, 20 feet to the left. Is he watching the same things I am or is his eye trained on something else entirely? What world is he experiencing right now?

Now the grandfathers are sitting on chairs, having the dad take pictures of them. They’re posing and enjoying themselves, arms folded behind their heads, matching grins on their faces.

The girls are running the routine again and again. A boy has dropped his own practice to record them. One of them trips over the wire. They all collapse in laughter. 

As my attention flicks between the two stories playing out here, I am overcome with something heavy and light at the same time. I wish I could explain to you exactly what it feels like, but I can’t. You just have to know. When I say I felt so human in this moment, you just have to know what that means. Surely you know for yourself what it means to be open and empty, full and endless, nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time. If you do know how that feels, then you know that this isn’t too dramatic at all, that it really is the tiniest moments of life that overwhelm your brain and make you feel truly awake, in every sense, for a precious fleeting second. 

It is at this time that I feel compelled to take these stories that have nothing to do with me, and make them my own somehow.

I rustle around in my bag so I can start writing. 

When I look up, I physically start in surprise.

The worlds have collided. All three grandfathers are talking to the boy with the yo-yo, asking him questions and wholeheartedly listening to the answers. The girls are closer now, demonstrating.

This shouldn’t feel as momentous as it does. Maybe it’s really not that big of a deal. Maybe someone else wouldn’t see this play out and think it’s worth a second thought, much less a whole written piece.

But no one else was sitting next to me today. No one else sat there and watched everything. I did. And so it’s my call on whether or not it’s a big deal.

Because you see, lines that shouldn’t have anything to do with each other, lines from different generations, different countries, different backgrounds, different languages, suddenly intersected for 30 seconds. And I saw it happen. How lucky, how opportune, to be able to watch the world pull its strings in real time, and be keenly aware of it.

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How many times, I wonder, have I experienced this? I am referring to the idea of being in the right place at the right time, and the only thing that is expected of me is my observation.

I am not a painter, nor am I a journalist or a photographer or writer or documentarian. 

But I am human, and alive, and conscious, and this is what I believe I owe the world in return for such a gift - my constant perception, my ceaseless thinking, my dreaming, my love. I don’t get to take a break. I don’t want to. This is my gift. This is my burden. This is what I owe the universe.