Feeling Human is always something worth celebrating

​I led a three-day experience this week that helped our group connect the dots of their pasts, and the pasts of others, and then we encouraged each other to be more embracing of healing-centered relationships.

As a closing activity, my friend and colleague Ginny led us in an activity that helped us reflect on our time together. She paired us up and gave us some prompts to help us think deeply about what the experience meant to us with our partners.

Everyone shared something their partner found meaningful. Much of that was deep and vulnerable. Then, everyone got a chance to express what the overall activity of sharing meant to them.

One young lady said something that will stick with me forever. She said, "the more we talked to one another about our experience, the more I started feeling human."

I am reminded and startled by reflections like that at just how many of us are going through life not experiencing what it means to be human. I say that owning that describes the majority of my life.

I told the young lady I completely understood where she was coming from. I told her I spent five decades of my life hiding from all of the challenging emotions of my humanity, but have spent the better part of the last decade discovering them. And along the way, trying to be a better friend to them.

To the point, I told my new friend, that today I am addicted to being human. I get triggered by my own instincts to pretend away or numb away the unsettling emotions that sometimes come with being who I truly am.

Today, I told her, I am totally intolerant to the mask of me that used to be the definition of me.

Shortly after making that declaration to her and to the group and after we all went our own way, I experienced a dose of human sadness. And I was like, really God? You really want to test the strength of my addiction to being human right now?

Do you not believe me, God?

Sadness is not fun. But being able to say I am sad is one of the most freeing human experiences ever.

Embracing sad is not fun, but pretending to not be sad is a unique kind of hell.

Inviting sad is one of the more challenging risks in life to take, but denying sad is one of the easiest ways there is to not live at all.

Another young lady in the group marveled at how connected a group of people can become in such a short period of time. Connected by our shared humanity.

I fear we are all living in more disconnected ways than ever. At the heart of that, I believe, is we are far more addicted to protecting ourselves from our humanity than embracing it.

But when you sit with people and you can freely say, this is who I am. I am sad or I am afraid or I am anxious or I am full of joy - when we can freely say those things, we are connecting as humans and not robots. Robots programmed to instinctually run from and not connect with our inner humanity and the inner humanity of others.

When my friend said, "I started feeling human" - she said it in celebration. I could see it on her face. I KNEW that celebration.

Emotions, even the challenging ones, are beautiful introductions to ourselves. They are a chance to meet ourselves as the humans we truly are, over and over again.

Is there anything more worthy of a celebration?

Life is hard. There is no escaping that, and it's taken me a long time to truly embrace that. It's taken me a long time to get to a place of celebrating sadness instead of hiding from it.

But here I am today, addicted to being human. In a world where I often find myself trying to prevent or heal addictions, that's one addiction I will continue to promote wide and far.

I witnessed it this week, the beauty that comes from humans feeling free to be humans. Sometimes that is hard, but it is always something I celebrate with gratitude.

It is my mission and purpose that one day that is something we will all be able to celebrate together.