WHAT THE HELL?

HUMANS!

I don’t care what your reason is for how you believe it happened, because no matter what you believe the fact remains that you are human.

Given that you are human, certain fairly concrete rules apply. You’ll need oxygen, you’ll need clean water, you’ll need food, you’ll require shelter much of the year, you have little in the way of natural defenses so you must outsmart predators, and last but not least, you will require sex. There’s a reason for this last one; the human race is not possible except as an ongoing process. If a single generation fails to reproduce, that’s the end of us. All of the things on this list are pretty much equally important; you can’t just take out a couple of them – not even for just a few days – without killing the experimental subject.

Maybe you believe that a super-intelligent, super-powerful supreme being created humans. If so, he or she appears to have put some pretty definite rules in place for you, as noted above. Honestly, these aren’t the kind of rules you can break. If someone created you, he or she intended very much that you live within these requirements. To think otherwise is to assume you were made in error. And no super-intelligent, super-powerful being would make such a glaring error.

Maybe you believe we evolved by chance, and if so, the same observation applies; apparently it’s pretty important that we take care of these things, these human requirements. So why is there this constant battle to deny being human?

It’s very popular to say, “Oh, I don’t have sex, that’s the source of all humanity’s problems, and I’m above all that.” And we give people who claim this an all-expense-paid life of leisure. Many are also fond of the, “Oh, I have no material needs” gambit. Again, while denying they require anything, they don’t do a day’s work, they just get an all-expense-paid life free of effort. But even then, I don’t see them going without oxygen. And it often turns out that although they’ve claimed to live without sex or without material goods, in the end we discover that actually they did the same as the rest of us – they just talked a better con.

Most mature people would agree that it’s a waste to spend your life hating or in anger. As one saying has it, “Hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” That’s exactly what happens. Our hatred has absolutely no effect on the one who earned it, it just poisons US. Regret is the same. If you spend all your time moaning and groaning about what might have been done better or where everything went wrong, then nothing will ever go right again. You’re turning all your energy against your own self. Don’t be so busy looking back and finding fault and laying blame that you fall off the cliff in front of you. Now listen, here is a great truth; the same is true in denying your humanity. You can spend all your time denying that you need these things and punishing yourself for failing to get by without them, or – here’s an idea – accept that you’re a human being with certain needs, and work forward from there. This is the only way that progress is possible. End the self-flagellation; you’re only hurting yourself.

Being human needn’t be a struggle, you’re making it that way. It’s Nature to need these things and there is no shame in it. Sex is only dirty if you decide it is, otherwise it’s a perfectly natural function which should be practiced, like anything else, with due care. Moral imperatives, like the tendency to enjoy music and dance, are part of being human. If you do what harms others, you are – in the end – harming yourself worst of all. Let other people do whatever they want! Don’t you have enough to worry about in your own life that you need to control and resent other people? Keep your eyes on your own path; that’s the only way ahead.

Make allowances for yourself; you know you’re going to need oxygen, so don’t venture into places without any available oxygen. If you think some god or gods made you this way, or you evolved by chance, makes no difference; you are here now. You are living in this body, which has certain needs. You can spend all your time fighting that and punishing yourself for failing to achieve what others appear (and only appear) to be able to do without. Or here’s a suggestion; accept your humanity, deal with it, celebrate it even – and then decide what this one particular human being is going to do with his or her life.