Humanness

Humanness is the quality, the abstraction, the fact and the act of being human.

Humanness sets up apart and ideally above all other known species in our ability to be sentient, act, react and interact with each other, the surrounding environment and members of other species. Humanness intuitively derives most of its manifestations and intellectual feedback from our capacity to feel and process those feelings at a subconscious level and how we project those very personal yet universal feelings onto others.

Our humanness prompts us to undertake and execute seemingly impossible acts of selflessness, bravery, defiance of our own physical abilities and heroism.

When a 110-pound mother is able to pick up a small truck and set it aside to save her offspring trap underneath it; that is humanness. When the firefighter risks his life to rescue a person in a burning structure and sometimes indeed gives his life in the process or after achieving his noble objective; that is humanness. When a small child holds and cuddles an injured animal and feels its pain and vulnerability and attempts to nurture it and heal it; that is humanness.

Sometimes, however, our humanness fails us miserably. Precisely because we are human and miscalculation and misjudgment are constant variants of our very frail humanity and social framework. Sometimes we think and behave in ways that unwillingly infringe upon other people’s humanness and we hurt their feelings though that was not remotely the original intention and all was done in the fun or spur of the moment.

Those moments invariably test the caliber, genuineness and depth of our true humanity. Feeling bad with and for the injured person is the right and only human thing to do.

Today I am felling a little more human than other days…