The Lost Art of Being Human

Start thinking differently about yourself

I used to be that guy. You know, the one who was waiting for his turn to talk, constantly working an angle. If you heard from me, there was usually a reason.

The other day I got a text from a friend…

“Was just thinking about you and wanted to make sure you were ok.”

My first inclination was to be a bit startled. What? Why? Did he think something was wrong? Did someone else tell him there was something wrong?

Old habits die hard.

No, nothing was wrong, outside of the usual path to improvement (which is never always forward progress).

This person and I share a couple of common bonds. One is the love of epically long gravel bike rides. The other is the process of recovery from severe emotional trauma. Mine was in tech start-up land. His was as an Army Ranger.

Don’t judge the difference between the two, because we don’t. Instead, we find our common bond in our different experiences and how we each have dealt with very bad things. We’ve each stepped out of wreckage, leaving bad behaviors in the twisted debris.

I guarantee that a significant number of people would have been aghast as to how I could compare a business gone bad with a guy getting shot out of a helicopter five stories in the air then having to defend his life from an encroaching enemy for 10 hours with a broken back.

Believe it or not, there is overlap, but that’s another story.

I felt compelled to write this piece after listening to Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast early this morning, ‘Feel Better, Live More’ (#454) with Africa Brooke on how to live your life without regret and the importance of speaking your truth.

Because I used to be that guy, I recognize the symptoms. Today’s western society of zero sum game and the often archetypal stereotypes we’ve established within this system lead many to perform not badly per se but shallowly.

For many, our lives have been reduced to simply looking out for ourselves and curating a persona for no other reason than to elicit a desired response from others and to reenforce that same persona with ourselves.

It’s all about the Me.

For instance, I ran into a former colleague the other day in a coffeeshop. This is how it went.

“Joe (not his real name), hey it’s Steve. It’s been a minute. How are you?”

“Oh, hi Steve. Fine. (pause) Great actually. Playing golf today. Just moved into the reserve part of the new golf community a few miles north of here (he named it and the name of the reserve area too). Took forever to get into the club, even after throwing down on the house. Had to call in a few favors to get off the waiting list. Right on the course. Bigger house than we need but it keeps the wife happy.”

I responded, “That’s great Joe. Hope you enjoy it. Beautiful day to be outside for sure. Gave the game up myself a decade ago. Didn’t find it served me too well.”

Jumping back in he said, “Yeah, you have to stay on it. My clients are all great golfers. Anything north of a 10 (handicap) doesn’t fly in that crowd Plus we how have a place out west now. Play a lot there too. More target golf than here, so I get it. If you can’t score well it isn’t any fun.”

Actually, that is not I meant by didn’t serve me well. Joe didn’t care though. What I meant was that it took too long, everyone drank too much, it wasn’t particularly good exercise and I usually came home more pissed off than when I left. But he didn’t ask. He was just waiting for his turn to talk. This a worrisome and all to common trait today.

Let’s break down what happened.

What Joe did was the offline equivalent of a curated social media post from someone fishing for likes. You know, the Insta profile that is 100% curated.

Rather than saying, “Oh? Why doesn’t golf serve you anymore, Steve?” He waited for his turn and then he offered up something equally curated. It didn’t matter if it any of it was true or not. That wasn’t the point. The point was the perception. The perception has become more important that the reality.

We are no longer interested in others anymore than we are interested in being authentic ourselves. Rather, we seek to project the pleasing, or enviable manufactured version of ourselves onto others.

How about another. Perhaps you know this person.

“My boss is such an asshole. He has no idea how much I do for the organization. Without me, this place would fall apart. I work my ass off and what do I get? Nothing. Plus, pretty much everyone I work with is either an idiot or lazy. Especially the millennials. My God, I have never met a group of softer and lazy whiners. They want a trophy for just showing up to work and they want personal days for everything. I swear, this whole generation is useless. I have to carry their load and clean up their messes pretty much daily.”

Self curation, promotion, judgement and self-absorption have become the norm today both offline and on. We no longer seek meaningful interactions, a desire to understand or learn.

Which is why when my friend sent me the text to simply check on me, it was startling because it was out of the norm of what most do. I know, because that is exactly how I used to act.

I can hear some of the self talk out there…“Sure, I know people like that but I don’t do that. I am not that person.”

No, you probably are not. But we all exhibit some of these bad tendencies, which can slowly become bad habits.

Believe me, over time, you can become that person. You can also un-become that person by being mindful and self aware…as well as, having the courage to be genuinely you.

Ask yourself, have you ever chimed into a dogpile of comments deriding someone on social media who has done or said something cringeworthy? Somebody posts on social an extreme position or some statement has been made in ignorance of the facts and the vitriol of the 937 comments is as bad as the original post. It all inflames you. The post and the judgement of the 937 who’ve jumped in so you add your two cents. You are all in a scrum with sub-threads in the replies. Six are now attacking one of the original commenters! You’ve forgotten about the original post. To what end?

All you’ve done is add more negative energy to the mix and took a large share of it away with you. Plus the 30 minutes you’ve invested into something that doesn’t serve you interacting with people you will never meet or encounter again.

Ask yourself, did you feel better after doing it? Probably not.

You are right, you are NOT that person. You have, like all of us, been so inundated with plastic perception that you’ve forgotten some of who you are. WHO you are has NOTHING to do with WHAT you are.

We have allowed our society, our media, our content and our social platforms to move from servant to master.

It’s time we all remembered what the lost art of being human is all about. If each of us becomes 10% more genuine, listened 10% more, expressed 10% more genuine gratitude for what’s happening and what we each have right now, expressed 10% more curiosity, and 10% more empathy for others; and if each of us spent 10% less time on our devices, the inherent and stunning beauty of our own unique human condition will again begin to shine through.