Human Being Being Human
Sometimes, I feel really deeply. Like I can sense my emotions affecting my physical self. Heart flaring, eyes shining, stomach swaying, fingers trembling, lungs suddenly reacting to a moment’s pause.
Usually, it’s because of small things, seemingly insignificant gestures that send me to the moon and back. Almost always, I remember I’m only one part of the whole of humanity. Or maybe I am multiple parts of the whole, or maybe I am the whole and everything is me and I am everything.
I remember, but I don’t forget that being human is more than existing.
He gave me six sunflower babies. For free.
I flew to the moon,
Then back to the earth.
Because I am human.
And I feel-
Trying to subdue my beaming smile, I picked up the babies from the rims of their paper cups, three in each hand, and walked out onto a windy St. Clair West. I was suddenly hyperaware of anything that could threaten the juveniles, and I could be seen hugging them to my chest to avoid a potentially fatal encounter with passerby. I was already in love with the smell of soil and the invisible energy matrix which permeates boundaries and connects life through sheer existence. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the overwhelming urge to nurture those delicate sunflower plants that were yet to blossom. They represented freedom, freedom from the restraints of routine. I wove my way through the complexity that is the Toronto streetcar until I met my mother and we safely transported the sunflowers home, where I lined them up along the windowsill. At second glance, they represented more than freedom. They were creation. My mini soldiers of spirit stood, yearning for the day they would turn their yellow faces to the sun.
-deeply.
Nature is humbling. At once, it is both fragile and adaptable. This is not a coincidence.
It is absolutely necessary to our survival as humans because we refuse to merely exist.
It’s about existing with purpose; your soul is alive. (Don’t question that semicolon; those are two related clauses.)
Is it because you are born of the earth that you are so powerful in your vulnerability?
I think so.