Why Some of Us Contemplate "How to Human" and Others Don't
Thanks to a fully functioning pancreas, I can stuff whatever I want down my gullet without giving it much thought.
Green smoothie? Sounds great. Nope, no need to tell me the exact ingredients—my body with sort it out. Chocolate chip cookie? Why yes! Can I please have two?
I chew, swallow and move on with my life.
My hubby doesn’t have that gift. He has Type 1 diabetes so when he eats, he has to spare brain power to calculate how many carbs he consumed so that he can adjust his insulin accordingly.
Sam’s lucky as far as diabetics go. Our insurance covers his insulin, he has both a pump and a continuous glucose monitor and he’s a resilient and well-adjusted human. He does what he needs to do and gets on with his life.
No kicking and screaming. No moaning and groaning. Just a (usually) good-natured acceptance of reality: “these are the facts of my existence and I deal with them accordingly.”
I’m mulling it over because, now that I’m settled back at home, I have the chance to roll up my sleeves and get back to the “How to Human: The Instruction Manual You Would Have Gotten From Your Elders if Our Society Sucked Less” project. And this analogy is critical to the project.
There are people in my life who think that the amount of time I spent contemplating well-being, spiritual pursuits, personal development and mildly fringe subjects like Human Design is, well, ridiculous. Snowflake-y, they might say, leaking a Parisian-level hint of scorn and disdain.
They wonder why I don’t do something better with my time, like buy a Wall Street Journal subscription and play the market.
If you share my hobbies and proclivities, perhaps you’ve felt the same scorn directed your way. Or maybe you haven’t. That would thrill me.
And here’s the link – the same way Sam has no choice but to think about what he consumes and adjust his insulin accordingly, I have no choice but to think about how to enjoy being a human on this planet because, like many of my fellow former addicts and depressives, I wouldn’t have survived if I didn’t.
Some of us get to go through life with fully functional pancreases, never spending a single moment contemplating how much insulin is required to digest the meal we just consumed. Others of us have to contemplate that after Every. Single. Morsel. we put in our mouths.
Mental, emotional and spiritual health – it’s the same way. Some of us stroll through the world, generally happy, healthy, resilient and well-adjusted. These people (who tend to be dandelions on the dandelion-tulip-orchid spectrum) would be wasting their time if they adopted my hobbies. Ain’t no need for them to contemplate things like the environmental impact on resilience or the Dalai Lama’s advice for increasing happiness. They have the mental/emotional/spiritual health equivalent of a fully functioning pancreas. They can just eat the cookie without having to think about it. They can just wake up and go through the world without having to think about their mood or energy or resilience.
Others of us – it doesn’t work that way. We do things like contemplate “How to Human” and (if we’re lucky) even ENJOY that contemplation.
So this is me starting to gather the tribe. I no longer know if “How to Human” is going to be a book. It might be a podcast or a series of workshops or just a few hundred musings. We shall see. But I’m realizing that I don’t feel like the owner of the project as much as the steward of it – someone who has the time, space and energy to research and build a framework, then put it out there. Hope a community emerges. A tribe. A group of people who think these topics are as delightful as I do, ones who are eager to interact with the wisdom we dredge up. I’m equally as fascinated to learn what ancient societies have to contribute to the conversation as I am to hear what cutting-edge research has to say on the topic.
In curiosity,
Keely
