What It Means to Be Human

A pathology runs through the way people talk to themselves nowadays. They have a frantic desire to improve, to overcome, to become something more than what they already are. Like there’s a better version of them out there, waiting, if they can just fix their thoughts or say the right words in the mirror each morning. It’s dressed up in therapy speak, but underneath it’s the same old disease: the belief that they’re not good enough. That they’re somehow incomplete.

They’ve been taught that the human condition is a flaw that needs to be fixed. But we are born into a world of contradictions, of joy and sorrow, of love and loss, and no amount of self-help or positive thinking can change that. The human condition isn’t a malfunction. It’s the essence of who you are. Some days hurt. Some lives hurt. That’s not a problem. It’s life. The pain you feel is part of the whole. You can’t separate the condition from the cost. You were born, so now you’ll feel. Some of that will be unbearable. There’s nothing wrong with you.

What’s far more unnatural is the constant self-management. The idea that you’re supposed to monitor your feelings like a machine. To make sure your mood stays in a green zone, to optimize every thought and redirect every emotion before it drifts too far from the line. All of this is anti-nature.

Life is messy. It’s both beautiful and tragic. And the pursuit of control over all of it strips you of the very thing that makes you human.

Positive thinking is just another form of repression. It dresses up your discomfort in pleasant language trying to mask the truth. Affirmations are an attempt to ignore your essence. If you were what you claim, you wouldn’t need to say it. And if you’re not, no phrase will make it so.

You don’t ever have to change. You don’t have to heal. You don’t have to become something else. If you were going to be it, you’d already be it. If you were going to do something, you’d already be doing it. Stop trying to push yourself into action because you don’t like what you feel inside. Do not confuse craving with calling. Wanting something badly enough to say it out loud doesn’t mean it was ever meant for you. To truly live isn’t about the pursuit of more. It’s about accepting the totality of who you are and where you are.

Who said you were supposed to matter? Who promised you control over the shape of your life? Things happen, sometimes they break you, sometimes they don’t. It’s not personal. It’s not your fault. Stop clinging to the idea that it could have gone differently or that a better version of you would have changed the outcome. What happened was always going to happen. You weren’t outside of it. You were shaped by it. That’s part of the condition too.

Much of what we call emotional turmoil is just resistance to what is. We fight against our nature, against our emotions, against our limitations, and the events that unfolded. But this is pointless. The human condition is about acceptance of life. You are not separate from what you feel. You are not separate from your fate. You are its instrument, shaped by millions of years of instinct, survival, and bloodline. To believe that positive thinking can erase that is delusional. You are not a blank slate. You are a continuation of all that has come before. Every thought, every feeling, every reaction is woven into the fabric of humanity. It is all part of the story.

Life is beautiful. It is violent. It is tender. It is painful. It is the inheritance of being alive. None of it needs fixing. None of it needs to be polished or perfected. It’s not a puzzle to be solved. It’s what you’ve been given, and that’s all it is. If you can carry it without trying to reshape it, you’ll find something deeper than fleeting happiness. You’ll find the fullness of what it means to be human.

Thanks for reading. Subscribe to get articles like this delivered to your inbox for free.