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.

Months spend in solitude and times of reflection, sharing my experience

This will be a very long piece of writing and I thank everyone in advance who will take the time to read what I’ll share with the world, it is deeply appreciated.

I left home after I finished school, leaving behind everything I’ve ever known, I threw myself into the unknown, not really knowing why I did that, partly because university or another form of formal education just didn’t felt right at that time and I trusted this feeling, thank goodness I did, as the following 16 months of travelling on the other side of the world teached me more than I could have ever imagined and by all means there have been terribly tough times, where I feared for my sanity and maybe I lost a bit of that as well, feels like it at least.

I have been back home since last year of July and strangely it doesn’t felt too much like home in the essential sense of the word anymore.. probably because the meaning of the word expanded to the whole world. The whole time being back in the city I spend 20 years of my life was rather strange. Nothing here really changed, but it felt different, alienating in a way because my inner reality didn’t correspond with my outer reality anymore. I feel like a stranger where I should’ve felt at home, but this is what 16 months of living differently can do to you.

I was overwhelmed by everything going on in my life, I had a lot to integrate and life constantly threw challenges and situations at me that forced me to move ahead even though I felt anything else but ready, but that’s how we grow, I guess. Growth happens when we face resistance, that builds character. This whole time has killed a lot of assumptions and illusions that I carried within me, about the world, myself and what I thought I knew. Being by yourself in silence without a distraction is not easy because you can’t put a filter over meeting yourself in an honest way and what we get to see is not always nice, sometimes its scary, because as we dig deeper into our own psyche and being, we discover beauty as well as hard facts about ourselves. This is real life, not Instagram.

I don’t know if what I’ll write might hurt someone, upset someone, inspires someone, but I need to write it, for my own sake, to summarize everything that I realized and all the harsh facts I had to accept, to make a somehow clear cut and ground to move on and maybe this will help someone.

For the most time when I was alone, I thought a lot about death, God, the meaning and purpose of life and a lot of other things. For the most part, it felt like examining and questioning everything I’ve ever hold true or believed in, it was refreshing, depressing, uplifting and terrifying to do so, but certain experiences in my life left me with no other choice.

So let’s start with one thing so many are so terribly afraid of, death. This five letter word that makes people nervous and tense, yes death is real, we are all going to die sooner or later and we don’t know when this will happen, it is unknown. I’m not necessarily afraid of death, I am more afraid of giving life not the honoring it deserves by living it fully. Let’s face it, we don’t know what will happen afterward, if anything happens at all..which I am pretty sure of. There is more to man than his wandering amidst the phenomenal world from his crib to his deathbed. So, on one hand, I somehow think there will be something after death, but what this something will be? No one knows, nobody died fully, spent a bit of time in the afterlife and came back to tell us, unfortunately – I would love to know more about what happens on the other side.

I’ve red about how happy and peaceful people died, how fulfilling death can be and so I am more afraid of not giving life my full attention, my full appreciation, my full gratitude, because my goodness look at the world ( it is a crazy place, yeah, but there is beauty in it ), look up to the stars, isn’t it amazing ? It’s such a miraculous existence that we find ourselves in, sadly we don’t recognize it that much anymore. All I can say is:”Go, go and live and don’t be afraid. Trust yourself and be kind on the way, what comes after this is unknown only this life is sure, see it as an opportunity to make the world more beautiful, bring more joy into people’s lives, do something that adds to the celebration of life, because it’s  a celebration, not the drudgery that most people experience day in, day out.”

Okay, so what about God ?Does he exist or doesn’t he? No he doesn’t,for those who don’t believe in him and on the other hand he does for those who believe in him. Everybody can choose what to believe in, but belief is not very substantial, belief in God is rational, knowing God is existential and I don’t claim to know him, I’m just human being trying to make up answers to the mystery of our wonderful universe. Whether God exist the way we think he does, or if he doesn’t is not of importance, as life exist equally for everyone, whether they believe or don’t and I can’t understand people that feel it to be righteous to make others submit to their version of God or else they will face eternal condemnation in hell.

So I come to my own conclusion, that nobody understands what God is, no one really does.. the picture of an old man with a long white beard? This father figure of authority is an imagination of the human mind, it’s a lie religion sold to people to make them easier to control, as nothing manipulates our emotions and thoughts more than pictures planted in our minds. I don’t know what God is, but if I would have to give a personal definition of what my understanding of God would be, if the human language could point towards the metaphysical infinity it intends to describe, it would be the all permating designing intelligence that underlies the world, the universe, everything. But in the end… what do I know, I’m really just trying to make sense of life myself.

Another thing I asked myself a lot is, if there is a purpose or meaning to life, to life in general, to our personal lives and so on.. Everyone wants to feel valued and appreciated for the things they can offer to the world, everyone wants to feel like their existence contributes to the world, but does that necessarily is the meaning or purpose for a human being to exist ? No, I don’t think so.. as if the value of a human life can be reduced to what he or she contributes, the purpose of a human life is fulfilled by the simple fact that one exist, not that one exists for doing this or that. Things, objects exist for a specific purpose,  but the brilliance of a human being can’t be reduced to that. The purpose of our lives changes when we change, the more we grow, the more our purpose grows, it’s a process.

This is our freedom, this is our dignity as living beings. You are alive, you have a beating heart in your chest that pumps blood through your veins, you have lungs to breath and you don’t have to justify being alive by doing anything or nervously looking for your purpose. Relax. It’s fine, not to know what to do with your life, but don’t let that turn into an excuse to be lazy. Life is pretty amazing, with or without purpose, but give yourself a break once in a while, you’re a human being, not a human doing. So in the end I think there is a bigger picture to everything, a purpose to existence , but if we are able to put that into words is pretty unrealistic.

How may I continue.. the world, this planet we call earth.. it holds so much beauty, but so much ugliness as well.. we tend to just see the good and turn a blind eye to the horror of the world, out of ignorance, or not being able to stand the pain,but whatever reason one holds to look away, it is not the right way to deal with things. We must acknowledge that living here contains suffering for everyone.Everybody experiences suffering in their lives and we probabaly would have less of it if we would embrace it for what it is, rather than trying to run away, hide from it or suppress it. There will always be suffering but we don’t have to suffer over that fact, but to simply acknowledge the reality of it. This sounds depressing in a way, but when do we take time to acknowledge that ? Life is not just pleasure.. suffering makes you real, nothing in life has ever teached me more humility and humbleness.

But as much suffering there is, there is an equal amount of joy and love in the world, but news and media always portray a picture of the world, that it’s a place you shouldn’t trust, to be suspicious, cautious, full of fear. I tell you, go and do trust it, have no fear ( or at least don’t give in to your fear ), give it a chance to show you it’s beauty, give it a chance to show you that people have good hearts. The ugliness of the world, the chaos should motivate us to make our lives a statement of  peace, and an act of adding beauty to the world in whatever form. Life is a celebration, not a struggle, all we need to do is to relax into it and see where it takes us. The way we have been brought up to live in the world is a lie. Go to school, work, pay bills and die. There is more to life and the world than this mundane way of living we were brought up to believe in. All I can say is, think for yourself, don’t believe everything you read and see and trust yourself and your own journey and give the world a chance and yourself as well, life can be so amazing if we can get out of our minds and live from the heart.

I don’t know, this was a rant of some sort, a summary of many things I thought about and which I experienced since being back in this town that I grew up in and all that I somehow want to get across to you is a different perspective on things. After spending 16 months in a completely different way of life, many things I once held true turned out to be lies and maybe this will help you, to start questioning as well, the world and the reality we experience and yourself as well, it might be a catalyst of growth.

Thank you for reading these words.

P.