Becoming Human
A cartoon in The New Yorker a few years ago showed two humpback whales and a boat loaded with tourists floating overhead. One whale was saying to the other, 'They have no lives so they watch us.'
The anxiety that accompanies human emptiness can be overwhelming. We cannot bear to let go our fantasies about our selves, our illusions of power and importance. At the same time, there is something in us that wants precisely this: to lay down the burden of running the universe so that we may understand our part in it, to seek something that is greater than our selves.
Paradoxically, to be human we must stay connected to our non-human sources. To find meaning, we must relinquish its pursuit.
The anxiety that accompanies human emptiness can be overwhelming. We cannot bear to let go our fantasies about our selves, our illusions of power and importance. At the same time, there is something in us that wants precisely this: to lay down the burden of running the universe so that we may understand our part in it, to seek something that is greater than our selves.
Paradoxically, to be human we must stay connected to our non-human sources. To find meaning, we must relinquish its pursuit.
posted by Maggie Ross at 1:50 am
1 Comments:
In the wake of the devastation and loss beyond words triggered by the recent typhoon in the Philippines, i went back reading your ecological repentance and wonder if the pain we now experience is nothing but an amassed one after all these years of avoiding those through mindless living and hedonism...
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