We’ve been fooled.
So many of us were taught, whether by religion or society, that spiritual liberation comes from “overcoming” or “being saved” from our human nature.
Now more than ever, however, I am convinced that the “overcoming of our human nature” is perhaps the precise root of our individual and collective spiritual malaise.
When I look around, I see that we live in a world with a frightening and dangerous level of alienation. Its dangerous precisely because where there is alienation there is almost always violence (and vice versa).
Evidenced best by the news cycle which seems to endlessly loop through new stories of war, genocide, injustice, and crime – violence is the easiest thing to rationalize when we are committed to seeing the people we harm as alien or “other.”
If we are privileged, these gross acts of big human injustice seen on the news may seem distant from us and our lives – but we have a responsibility to act because the alienation of anyone anywhere is threat to the humanity of all of us everywhere.
This begins by confronting the systems of alienation we already participate in.
From the same sources which have taught us we need to “overcome our human nature” we have inherited a system of alienation built upon conditional love and acceptance.
Often times, love, acceptance – basic dignity – is granted only when certain conditions of being are met – whether it be attaining a certain level of moral righteousness, being a member of certain “in-groups” or demographics, meeting some unrealistic beauty standards, fitting into compulsory heteronormativity, or reaching some level of success, accomplishment and material amassment.
Inherent in these conditions of love and acceptance is an internalized belief that my validity as human – my permissibility and the possibility of my belovedness – is externally granted.
It something I must continually earn and vie for.
It is not something inherent, unconditional, or given.
- Anytime I show up to my job with my eye set on a promotion in order to gain the approval of others,
- Anytime I conceal a blemish or curse the scale because I view them as threat to my worthiness of love,
- Anytime I brutalize myself for being attracted to the same sex or for struggling to adhere to rigid and antiquated gender roles,
– I endorse the idea that I must be something other than what I am in order to be fundamentally worthy of receiving love and acceptance.
The problem is that not only does endorsing such an idea alienate myself, but I alienate others too.
This is because I reinforce to others the idea that – yes, just as I must meet the conditions of love and acceptance, just as my own dignity is contingent upon these external standards – so is yours. So you better get to it.
(Re)claiming ones humanity – and the inherent dignity and permissibility and goodness of that humanity – subverts the system, liberates one from the compulsivity of conditional love and acceptance.
Perhaps this is why Henri Nouwen writes “We are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think about us. Coming home is claiming the truth that we are the beloved.”
I am interested in this “coming home.”
I’m interested in this coming home because I believe the violence in the world demands our efforts of de-alienation.
Something I have come to see however, is that “coming home” is indeed the prerequisite to our capacity to welcome others home too.
This is to say, our capacity to address the violence in the world and to humanize people who have been alienated is directly correlated with the degree to which we have addressed the ways we are already violent and alienated to ourselves.
Now more than ever it is vital we encounter, validate, and celebrate our greatest common denominator – our shared humanity – but we cannot appreciate our shared humanity until we first take serious the work of reclaiming and acknowledging our own.
We must first identify and address the many ways we are still alien to ourselves. In doing the divine work of our own de-alienation, only then do we have a chance of helping others and the world doing the same.
It begins with me.
It begins with you.
SO VERY HUMAN is a litany on human participation, one which attempts to awaken us to truth of our inherent permissibility, subverting the engines of alienation which keep us enslaved to conditional acceptance and that envisions a world in which all people get to be human.
It is a creative project wherein I document, investigate, and engage the work of my own de-alienation with the hope that it acts as an invitation to others to do the same.
Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself.
Thich Nhat Hanh
SO VERY HUMAN 