“Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.”1
I’ve been thinking about what it means to be human. Whether that is the two halves of a soul that make one, or just the existence of opposable thumbs. If it’s all about kindness and modesty or about getting ahead no matter what.
Analysing human nature leads me down to empathy as well as plain, old emotions. Does human nature lie in repetition? In the act of sleeping and waking up, making your loved ones tea as they linger in the doorway, calling your friend to discuss the night before, screaming your lungs out over the loud bass booming through the speaker in a tipsy bar, watching a film and feeling as if it were made for you, swimming in an ocean of hi’s and hello’s as you enter somebody’s house, everybody equally happy to see you. Is this universal? Or only specific to my life? Natural to me perhaps, yet at times feeling wholly fake and facade-like; purposefully reminding myself that this is real life. This is humanity.
On a July day in 2021, after spending a summer by myself, in the midst of moving woes and being a free guest in a flat in Maida Vale, I put on my mask and braved the great city of London after being a resident for close to a year. Impulsively, I decided that day was to be spent in the National Gallery, escaping the dry heat outside and my loneliness inside. I was surrounded by adults and children alike, looking deep into the same paintings as me, all of us united in that one moment. I stood in front of brush strokes disguised as snow, men walking down a lonely lane, a chimney letting out smoke, the vast scenery lay bare in front of me, as if I could step in at that moment. I stared deep into a renaissance woman’s aura, it was just her and me. Tears came to my eyes. Tears were a casual constant around that time. I stood in the middle of the National Gallery as I wept softly, not wanting attention, but feeling so deeply moved by where I was and the art I was seeing that I couldn’t stop. I felt the human experience in that moment, everything aligned. Climbing the stairs, staring up at the dome like glass ceiling that appeared, my hands ran through the railing next to me, I savoured every minute I had in there. Just me, people watching, observing the way art could mean different things to different people. I watched a man sketch a painting he was looking at. I sat on the same bench as an older woman, so different in our worlds but occupying the same space. I stood and stared, no performance and nowhere to go. No place to be but here.
Groups coming together, forming a community, shielding each other from what is to come, without at all thinking about themselves. An umbrella stretched out on top, stopping the gloom. Sending a poem to each other, simple ways to say ‘I miss you.’ Not seeing each other every day but lingering somewhere in the ether. The musk of friendship still occupying the air around us, life doesn’t need to be led as a one man army anymore.
It is in my nature to be unfiltered and remain that way in every room I’m in. Though the inverse is also true, after occupying said room, on my way home, I do, often, scrutinise every bit of my unfiltered language, usually beating myself up and hoping that the men there found me witty and attractive and the women thought I was sweet and kind. I never really know what they think. That is my nature. Perhaps what makes me human, scratching the itch till it bleeds. It’s usually more universal than I think.
I’m just trying to make sense of what I am, why I’m here and what I should be doing. Of course in a real, practical sense, I have the answers. But in my head and heart, I don’t. Not really. I struggle to make sense of why I am the way I am most days. Trying to understand if there is something fundamental in all of us. Kindness or generosity? If that were true, then the world would be a happy place. So what is it that we all have in common? Lines in our palms and self deprecating thoughts in our heads? Complicated familial relationships and a dislike of how we look in photos? A social media addiction and a need to eat something sweet after dinner? Is there universality in human nature or are we all mysterious creations of different brush strokes being smushed together? In a curiously mystical manner, what makes any of us human is neither here nor there. It just lies somewhere in the field of our dreams, where whatever we say goes and whatever I plant grows.
If we are a sum of our parts, and that makes us what we are then what am I made up of? My memories, and the dinner I ate last night; a seaside trip I took many years ago which unleashed in me a consciousness I never knew existed, a friendship I watched die in front of me that broke my heart, the possibility of a new relationship that repaired me. The guilt from being a rude teenager, the sadness from misplacing a book my father loaned me and never finding it, the tears that resulted from accompanying my grandfather to the doctor. This is what I’m made up of. Bits and pieces of a constantly moving life, driving down the roads I once knew, speeding past the red light. Constantly in motion, shoes on and ready to go. So, the many parts of me are constantly shifting, moving around like a puzzle, shifting gears like a well oiled machine.
Seeing butterflies and wondering whether it’s the universe trying to tell me something. The flirtation of a leaf with my window, bristling here and there. Watching the rain pour down from my bed, are the gods in the sky telling me they’re washing away the past and will grow a new and fertile future? There’s nothing more human than finding meaning in the banal.
Maybe my humanity lies in the people I meet and the puddles I jump in-no thoughts and full force. When somebody’s face refuses to leave my mind no matter how hard I try, showing up at night and there to greet me in my daydreams, that’s my nature. Loving and loving hard, arms open wide, wounded and battered but ready to go a second time. After all, isn’t life about trying again and again?
Perhaps change is what makes us human. Just when you get comfortable, it’s gone. As you begin to wonder if this is all, a tide shifts. When you believe the sky is blue and only blue, it appears in shades of pink. Clearing your throat leads to a whole new presence and pressing your feet down gives you confidence. Those who promised to stay didn’t but the ones you never expected to are still here. Maybe that’s the real humanity of it all-the unexpected nature of being a person. To be constantly surprised, nothing in stasis anymore. Where no matter how similar you might think you are, there’s always going to be that one person with a mole above their lip that you’ve never seen before. An identifier for you that nobody else has.
Searching for humanity but it feels like the doors are closed. Or maybe I’m forcing myself out of them. They don’t feel open to me, not with all my faults and shortcomings. But I keep forgetting that love is standing there, arms wide open, ready to take me in. I just have to step inside.
“A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkindle, ungrateful? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee,
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?”2
George Herbert, Love, The Metaphysical Poets
Ibid, second stanza