What Does It Mean to Be Human?

A few days ago, during one of my usual deep thinking sessions, I found myself sitting with a question: what does it actually mean to be human?

It's a strange question because it's one we rarely ask, and if we, I don’t think we are being fully intentional in finding the answer. We spend years trying to figure out how to have a successful career, how to build healthy relationships, how to stay fit, how to heal, how to become our "best selves." But I don't know that we spend much time asking what we're actually trying to become in the first place.

If you know me, you know this isn't an unusual place for my mind to wander. I love questions that don't have clean answers. In fact, I've become a little suspicious of answers that arrive too quickly. The questions worth asking usually ask us to sit with them.

So this isn't my definition of what it means to be human. It's simply where my own thinking has landed today. Yours will probably be different, and I genuinely hope it is. The point isn't to agree. The point is to remain curious enough to keep asking.

The first place my mind went was surprisingly simple. I wondered if being human is, before anything else, about learning how to be. Not exist. Existing happens automatically.

I mean really be.

That sounds almost too obvious until you begin paying attention to how rarely we actually do it. I've noticed how often my body and my mind seem to live in different places. I'll be answering an email while thinking about tomorrow. I'll be walking Bagel (my fur child) while replaying a conversation from yesterday. I'll catch myself doing something simply because it's what I always do, not because it's what I actually need in that moment.

It's fascinating how repetition slowly disguises itself as intention.

Sometimes I wonder how much of my life is made up of genuine choices and how much is simply familiar programming. Habits inherited from my family. Expectations absorbed from society. Little routines I've repeated so often that they've started introducing themselves as me.

Maybe being human is remembering that we can interrupt that pattern. Maybe it's pausing long enough to ask, is this really me choosing, or am I just repeating?

That thought led me somewhere else. I've always found it interesting that we trust cycles in nature more than we trust them in ourselves. We don't look at a tree in winter and assume it's failed. We don't watch the tide pull back and conclude the ocean has disappeared. We understand that seasons are temporary until those seasons become our own. One difficult month convinces us something is wrong. One failed relationship becomes evidence that we'll never love again. One rejection quietly rewrites the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

It's curious how quickly we mistake an experience for an identity.

Maybe being human is remembering that we're part of nature, not separate from it. Maybe we're allowed to have winters too. That realization has changed the way I think about healing. For a long time I thought healing meant moving in a straight line. Becoming progressively wiser, calmer, less reactive, more evolved. I expected that once I learned a lesson, I'd never have to meet it again. Life, unsurprisingly, had other plans. Sometimes I discover I've turned healing into another job.

Journal.

Meditate.

Read another book.

Listen to another podcast.

Find another practice.

Become a slightly more optimized human.

It's almost funny when you notice it. We escape one hamster wheel only to build another one, except this one has beautiful notebooks, matcha, and a morning routine.

Don't get me wrong. I love many of those things. But I've started wondering whether we've accidentally confused healing with endless self-improvement.  Some of the moments when I've felt most whole had nothing to do with "working on myself." They happened while laughing until I cried with friends, swimming in the ocean, getting lost in a conversation, or walking through nature without trying to extract a lesson from it. Maybe healing isn't always something we do. Maybe sometimes it's something that quietly happens while we're busy living.

Another thought kept returning to me. I think we've forgotten that we're made of the same things as the world around us. Fire feels like the energy that pulls us toward something that makes us come alive. Air reminds me of meditation, of spaciousness, of the relief that comes from realizing not every thought deserves my attention. Water is emotion. It's the tears that finally arrive after we've spent weeks pretending we're fine. It's also joy, because sometimes the body doesn't seem to distinguish between crying from grief and crying from laughter. Earth is the feeling I get every time I spend enough time outside that my nervous system begins settling before my mind does. Those elements aren't abstract ideas to me anymore. They're experiences. Different doorways that somehow lead back to the same place.

Back to myself.

There's another part of being human that I can't quite explain, but I've observed it enough times to stop dismissing it. People change when they find something they genuinely love. Not metaphorically. Physically. You've probably seen it too.

Someone falls in love.

Someone discovers work that feels deeply aligned with who they are.

Their face changes.

Their posture softens.

Their eyes become brighter.

People immediately ask what they're doing differently. What cream they're using. What they're eating. What supplement they're taking. But I've started thinking we're asking the wrong question. Maybe the more interesting question is:

What became alive inside of you?

I sometimes wonder if that's where the divine quietly meets the human experience.

As if we've come here to take something invisible and give it form. To translate love into actions. Curiosity into conversations. Beauty into art. Compassion into presence. Maybe manifestation isn't only about getting what we want, but about making the invisible visible.

Of course, being human isn't only light. It's also the parts we'd rather not introduce at dinner.

Fear.

Jealousy.

Shame.

Ego.

The stories we tell ourselves when no one else is listening.

I think they're simply part of the landscape. Being human is movement and stillness. There are seasons when I want to build, create and explore. There are others when I don't want to do much at all. I've stopped seeing those quieter seasons as interruptions. Maybe they're part of the rhythm too.

The older I get, the more comfortable I become saying three words… I don't know.

There are things I know, of course. But "I don't know" has introduced me to far more than certainty ever has. It has kept me curious. It has made room for people who see the world differently than I do. It has reminded me that understanding isn't something we arrive at once. It's a conversation we keep having with life. Not every contradiction inside me needs to be solved. I can crave freedom while wanting stability. I can love solitude and still long for connection. I can feel deeply grateful and deeply uncertain on the very same day. Maybe being human isn't becoming internally consistent. Maybe it's learning how to hold those contradictions without letting them hold us.

And finally, I think being human is making mistakes. Not because mistakes are the goal, but because they seem to be one of life's favorite teachers. We're not robots. We're not finished products. There is no rule that says we can only begin again on a Monday, at the start of a new month, or on January 1st. Life seems remarkably generous with fresh starts.

Maybe being fully human isn't about arriving at certainty and learning to live without it. I don't know if any of these thoughts are true. I only know they've been true for me lately. And perhaps that's the best part about questions like this. They don't ask for agreement. They ask for honesty.

So now I'll leave the question with you.

What does being human mean to you?