What does it mean, to be human?

I think, that this is a question we all asked ourselves. I mean here we are, humans, this species walking on two feet on a floating island called earth, what a mysterious and rather odd situation when we think about it – like holy shit, you are alive! Just take one little moment and acknowledge this. You are alive and in front of you is nothing else than the possibility, to embrace what is right in front of your face, there is no guidebook, no manual for how to be alive. We are born into a mystery and the only sane thing to do is to embrace it for what it is.

So what does it mean to be human, to be alive? Is this life not more than mindless consumption and neurotic gratification through all kinds of things we distract ourselves with? To fill this horrible emptiness that is lurking within us, if we don’t do anything at all? If we allow ourselves to just be, we all feel it to some extent, a feeling of isolation, of meaninglessness, of not being good enough, a subtle sense of fear – it is the background noise of our lives, it is the underlying sense of knowing that there is something wrong, it is the human condition today.

Being human means more than consuming and buying one goodie after another while carrying the illusion, that this will make you happy or whole. Our lives have grown shallow and loose their substance. People are frustrated, full of anger and fear, the light in their eyes has vanished.  It is almost like they need sticks to hold their eyes open because they are so tired.( Just like in the picture above 😉 )We are in desperate need to be woken up to the miracle that is in a continuing process of unfolding around us. We have, to a large extent, grown cold and insensitive to ourselves and the world. Looking around I ask myself – and that is what it means to experience human life? This has to be a joke that I fail to find funny in any way. WAKE UP!

This feeling tries to tell us something, if we are courageous enough, to listen, it will tell us that we have to stop. We have to stop wasting our time, we have to stop forcing us to be anything else than what we are right now, we have to stop letting fear make our decisions for us, we have to stop worrying about what other people think, we have to stop trying to fulfill their expectations, we have to see that life is so much more than what we have been told. This is so amazing, it is so precious, so fragile, life is a gift and you are a gift to life.

Being human means, to be full of mistakes and to be vulnerable. There is no strength in keeping up your shield, there is tremendous strength in dropping it and to be open. Nothing is more strong and courageous than to reveal yourself to this world as you are. No filter, no makeup, no bullshit, just the beauty of raw humanness. To be human means, to create, not just to consume. To be human means to help your fellow men, to live life to the fullest because there is nothing left to do other than that. You are not the character this world wants you to be – not these limiting beliefs, these doubts, this fear that has been injected into you since you were born. Shake it off. You are brilliance itself, you hold more potential than you were told. We must do life the favor, to be fully alive, to create, to add to its majesty. A life will have gone to waste if it didn’t bring more beauty to the world.

To be human means, to explore your inner world, to face the darkness that lives there, to move beyond it, to make as many mistakes as possible, fall on your knees as often as possible and stand up again. Life here is challenging, it will always be and it’s good that way because that’s the only thing that makes us grow as human beings. Now go and stand on your own two feet, because no one will do it for you. You stand alone, there are friends, family, and relationships, but you have to stand alone, they can’t be there forever and they won’t, but to be able to stand alone without someone else as a crutch to help you do that is something incredibly important, it will remove neediness and the feeling of being dependent on others out of your life experience and only then true human relation is possible, then they are rooted in freedom, in acceptance and maturity.

This is it. This is life, your life – live it your way, not someone else’s way. You have nothing to lose. You can do anything you want, everything is just open for you to explore. Just have trust and there will be doors opened for you, that otherwise would have stayed shut.