"After all, we're only human"
I've been realizing lately and when I say lately over the past year that I'm not as invincible as I normally pretend that I am. This realization began of course with the breaking of the foot and is finishing because with each and every dumb thing that I do I realize that I'm just going to get hurt if I continue on with my stupid path. I've said it before, but I promise I'm doing my very best to take care of myself...but I'm really not good at it.
So, on my run today, I asked myself what is the point of being only human? As humans we constantly create and emulate things greater than us, things that we can never aspire to be. We write about characters that could never be real, invent superheros to solve the problems we can't, and religiously follow our own twisted standard of perfection.
But what's wrong with being "only" human? Without being human we would never know pain or sorrow or love or friendship....what I'm saying is that we'd be robots.
Lately I've been struggling a lot with who I am and what I'm doing and where I'm going. I assume that this is nothing more than all 22 year olds go through at this exact point in their lives.
Do I do the grad school thing?
Do I settle down and get married?
Do I focus on my career as a triathlete instead?
Would I like a dog or a cat someday?
One or two story house?
Sports psychology or forensic psychology?
The questions, I assume differ for everyone but the point is the same. In this world we're all running with no direction, no definite plan, no knowledge of what could or could not happen in the future.
So do we keep running towards it?
The answer I came to as I was running today was yes. Keep running as fast as you can and do everything that you can along the way. What's a beautiful run in the woods if you don't stop and admire the view? Why bike 50 miles if you're not going somewhere with beautiful scenery?
I guess what I'm just saying is that I've been realizing that no matter how much, or how fast I run towards my goals or away from my problems we're all equally lost in this life. We're all equally confused as to how to do our best job to be perfect. Why? Because we're human and we fail at being perfect each and every time.
But, in an answer to my origional question that's the beaty of being just human. We make mistakes. We regret them, we make the right choices. And all through out this mess we realize that being perfect is not what it's about. It's about being the best human possible. Nothing else in eternity has the chance we do: to mess up and find beauty along the way anyways. I think that's the best part about being human. That, and the fact that we have other humans to share that imperfect life with.
I definitely think you should do "the grad school thing" :-)
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I'm an old crotchety lady and I'm still asking myself questions like this...
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