There is no shortage of advice on how to be a human organism. There are monks and mentors and martyrs and masters—some reluctant, but many not. They consistently emerge in all proverbial corners of human space and time. There are seminars on war and there are seminars on peace. Academically, we have the fields of anthropology and history and psychology, disciplines devoted to spelunking into our biases about ourselves. We humans are compelled to share the plot lines and characters living inside our own skin (case in point—me, right now!). In the Homo sapiens motherboard, there is someone to tell you how to breathe, someone else to tell you how to eat, yet another on how to sleep, another on how to be silent, still another on how to pray, and even those on how to die. Life as a "how-to" has been mapped out and pinned to the extent that our affections allow. Living is a raging industry and fully available on the market, commodified in ideas and opinions and clever posts (hello again!). The vulnerable heart fits perfectly inside a Mylar balloon made to share sympathies or congratulations, depending on the occasion. Brokenness is a path of profits and prophets, much like birth, health, food, education, punishment, sex, joy, and death.
This is not a deconstruction of the capitalistic and transactional nature of humans, though. I am not equipped with the savvy for such an effort. It is what it is. We are creatures of thought, and perhaps that's why being human feels as if it's not for the faint of heart. What other creature walks through this world with the keen ability to imagine its own annihilation, the end of the very universe? How many times have you envisioned your own funeral? Who was invited, and, of those, who actually came? What did they say? How many posted on your social media pages? How far back did you reach into other people's hearts? Funny, how we remain so moved by the depths of one another. Knowing that we will die is itself an inextricable part of being human. We endlessly soothe ourselves with conclusive explanations for everything that ever was, is, and will be, fully convinced by our balms. Heaven and hell. An interested God. An uncaring universe. Cycles and termination. Cosmic dancing and boundless stillness. The big bang. Personified rivers and personified mountains and, somewhere in the vast, dark ocean, a salty mother. Monsters and angels and devils and guides. Infinity. Checks and balances. Karma. Transcendence. All one. All nothing. The not-self.
Are you getting the memo yet? It is all so very ... human.
So I will add something to the human pot, to this melange of ideas, this jambalaya of hows and whys. Which is this: death is a great teacher. For me, at least, this is true. I have come to find, under the unfathomable weight of grief, a holy mystery. Things become obvious, such as this: it doesn't matter how much armor you put on in this world—to life, you are always naked. And yet, I want to say, don't despair, raw one. You walk amongst naked multitudes. That which you keep in the deepest, most vulnerable room of your being, that terrible pain that brought you to your knees, that which you instinctively want to push away—that thing is your treasure. Your strength. Your superpower, if you will. If you can stand to cradle and love it, it becomes the thing which all alchemists pursue.
Gold.
It strikes me that there is something important to add here. It is about Gaza. Death is a teacher, yes, and pain is a treasure. But torture and terror are antithetical to the most precious thing of all—life. What is happening in Gaza is horrific not just because people are being killed, but because they are being relentlessly cornered into fear. I read somewhere that, before 7 October, suicide and benzodiazepine-use rates were already skyrocketing in Gaza. There is something indescribably grotesque about creating conditions that drive human beings to perceive life itself (samsara, if you will) as the enemy. I will leave it there. But it felt important to draw distinctions between death and pain in one way, and torture and terror in another.
Andreia with the Nat Geo kidsDuring my stay here, the Association hosted an ecotourist group from National Geographic. The visitors were teenagers from the U.S. What a cool experience for them.
