Being a human being is complicated!

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has commiserated with a friend about the unfathomable mysteries of human nature:

• the erratic and unpredictable mood swings,
• falling in and out of love,
• unconscious drives (“what made me do that?”),
• unconscious desires (“I don’t know why I like chocolate so much”),
• the secret life of our hatreds and judgments and other thoughts we don’t want to think and don’t want other people to know that we think,
• the inexplicable loneliness we sometimes feel, even in a crowd,
• the petty immaturities that we can’t seem to shake free of,
• the elusiveness of happiness, contentment and true joy,
• the frustration of possessing power with which we have little control,
• the fear of knowing we’re going to die,
• the angst of realizing that reality rarely arranges itself according to our preferences, wants and dreams,
• the dastardly challenge of breaking bad habits,
• the remarkable depth of the heart,
• the beauty and power of love,
• the occasional noble instinct,
• the capacity we have for compassion, peace, kindness, genius and creativity,
• juxtaposed with a capacity for cruelty, selfishness, greed, stupidity and apathy.

All of this (and more) in a single human being.

What do we do with all these drives and instincts, capacities and powers, if we recognize and understand them at all?

It’s something we all have to figure out for ourselves. We have a lifetime to do it, fortunately, and every next generation provides some new insight or understanding, which is added to our aggregate base of knowledge of what it is to be a human being and how to manage what you’ve got.

This base of knowledge, though, isn’t found in any single book for handy reference. It’s scattered everywhere, not just in books, but in songs, in movies, in art, in conversations, in personal journals, in contemplative meditation, in observations of history and social behavior, in the presence of a great person, and, in our inner experience.

Friends and I used to joke, “I want a user’s manual!” There is no manual, and I don’t think there will ever be one. Too many different perspectives that don’t agree. That seems to be the biggest problem.

But I think too, we really are supposed to figure it out on our own.

And figuring it out can be an interesting adventure with phenomenal experiences and big rewards.

Life is a treasure hunt, and you’re the treasure.

This blog is a diary of my treasure hunt, my personal discovery of what it is to be human.