I began this blog with a simple question: what does it mean to be a human being?
I've had a while to think about this, and I hate to admit it, but I am hardly closer to an answer. If anything, I feel farther away from one. What a year it has been..
If I had a time machine, and I could only choose one day to go back to, I think I know the day I would pick. It was a September afternoon of the year 2000, and my best friend B was in Atlanta at the airport. I never came to get him that day, and I am pretty sure that if I had, our history would have much different. Not necessarily better, but definitely different.
You see, he had helped me and my young son move away so I could return to school just a few weeks earlier. But when he came down, his cousin came along too, and I couldn't afford to help them both stay with me. I was barely able to feed myself, let alone my small child, and I certainly couldn't keep up two grown men. B understood that, and so without me even having to ask, he and his cousin were gone. But I knew there was more to our connection than just friendship. I knew why he came back, and I knew what his presence meant, but it terrified me, and in the end, I never came. Eventually, he got his ticket switched and flew home. Several months would pass before we would talk again, and from that point on, anything more than a friendship was not an option.
Who knows what would've happened if I had picked him up. We both had a lot of unresolved drama in our lives that manifested like late summer storm clouds - sudden, violent unexpected bursts that shattered our being to the core - which could've easily spilled over into our relationship and damaged it. Plus, as young as we both were, there is no doubt that we would've made many mistakes. Without the patience or understanding to persevere through the more difficult battles, it would've been hard to grow as close as we eventually did. We'll never know, because it never happened.
You see, ours turned out to be a pure love - pure in the sense that we had no reason to lie to eachother, so we never did. I could always count on him to give me his honest opinion on a matter, and he could count on me to do the same. He would take time to understand the situation from every angle before reaching an opinion. I never really understood the significance of that until recently, but his doing so taught me that understanding is a key to perspective. If you don't fully understand a situation, you can't deal with it properly.
This brings me to the point of answering my own question.. I asked what it means to be human, and I realize that I haven't fully understood the situation that is the current state of humanity, so I was unable to answer the question. Now, however, I realize that there is a bigger question we should be asking ourselves, given the current state of affairs.. What happens when we stop being human?
I've had a while to think about this, and I hate to admit it, but I am hardly closer to an answer. If anything, I feel farther away from one. What a year it has been..
If I had a time machine, and I could only choose one day to go back to, I think I know the day I would pick. It was a September afternoon of the year 2000, and my best friend B was in Atlanta at the airport. I never came to get him that day, and I am pretty sure that if I had, our history would have much different. Not necessarily better, but definitely different.
You see, he had helped me and my young son move away so I could return to school just a few weeks earlier. But when he came down, his cousin came along too, and I couldn't afford to help them both stay with me. I was barely able to feed myself, let alone my small child, and I certainly couldn't keep up two grown men. B understood that, and so without me even having to ask, he and his cousin were gone. But I knew there was more to our connection than just friendship. I knew why he came back, and I knew what his presence meant, but it terrified me, and in the end, I never came. Eventually, he got his ticket switched and flew home. Several months would pass before we would talk again, and from that point on, anything more than a friendship was not an option.
Who knows what would've happened if I had picked him up. We both had a lot of unresolved drama in our lives that manifested like late summer storm clouds - sudden, violent unexpected bursts that shattered our being to the core - which could've easily spilled over into our relationship and damaged it. Plus, as young as we both were, there is no doubt that we would've made many mistakes. Without the patience or understanding to persevere through the more difficult battles, it would've been hard to grow as close as we eventually did. We'll never know, because it never happened.
You see, ours turned out to be a pure love - pure in the sense that we had no reason to lie to eachother, so we never did. I could always count on him to give me his honest opinion on a matter, and he could count on me to do the same. He would take time to understand the situation from every angle before reaching an opinion. I never really understood the significance of that until recently, but his doing so taught me that understanding is a key to perspective. If you don't fully understand a situation, you can't deal with it properly.
This brings me to the point of answering my own question.. I asked what it means to be human, and I realize that I haven't fully understood the situation that is the current state of humanity, so I was unable to answer the question. Now, however, I realize that there is a bigger question we should be asking ourselves, given the current state of affairs.. What happens when we stop being human?
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