Anthropoid. Earthling. Homo sapien. Walking bundles of flesh, blood, bones, skin, brains, hearts, souls, and spirits. What does it mean to be a human? How can we make sense of the experiences labeled as life? Why were we not brought to be as any other creature? Why not a cat? A dog? Or even a bear? How do we contribute to all the events around us? How do we trigger life-altering events? How do we endure the events that find us first?
Throughout life, we reconnect and reconcile–both with and without regrets and reminiscence. We reach out again to those who have hurt us and those we have hurt, as connection is both inherent and crucial to our humane state. We find ourselves running to many previous homes to rejoice in what was once, or to celebrate what is soon to be. Running back through doors that lead back to different dimensions of past chapters. Recollecting all that we have learned from before as resources needed for our new destinations–our new futures. To tend to the roots of what truly completes us and what we can never be without.
Without roots, there is no growth, which forges our humanity. Comforts never last forever nor do they ever truly go away. To detach ourselves from the comfort of a closed chapter inevitably sends us into the comfort of another. Growing from the people we have always cherished and away from the places we have made sanctuaries out of are amongst the greatest anguishes and euphoric feelings that we will ever embrace–and that’s the point of experiencing life. We race with the trees around us as the seasons change, measuring how much stronger and taller we’ve grown since the year before. As we rival this growth, we accept that change is key to our health–specifically mentally.
A crisis, an epidemic, and a journey: that is what mental health is. We struggle with it as well as against it. We dive into diagnoses from degree-certified experts who try to direct us on how to live more thoughtfully and decipher what exactly makes us human. Mental health can be what connects and grows, but also what separates and deteriorates. A stigma exists on how much accountability we should take based on whatever illness we possess. No matter the labels we acquire for what happens in our minds, we can still find strength in our mentality. With every day, we find a new way to combat our demons. We are the only ones who can decide what our mental health means to us. Only we decide how our wisdom ages with our experiences.
If we are indeed made from clay, then aging must be proof of the art of life. How we stretch towards the sunlight and how we shrink underneath the moonlight demonstrates the sanctity of growing with time. With time and experience comes the internal desire to shift into various shapes, mold ourselves from the image from yesterday, and form the person we’ll be tomorrow–and there is something profound about the way we express our humanity during that process. The colors of our hair explore the spectrum of light. The octaves of our voice travel up and down many measures. The pupils we use to scope the world around us both help us to magnify the small, finer details, and to unfocus and take in the big picture that is life–although through many trials and triumphs as we age. Even in death, our reinventing of ourselves never stops as our spirit ages and accrues new meaning through the legacies we leave behind. Even when our physical forms are no longer here, pieces of our souls will continue to paint the sky.
Whether it is through glass or through water, we catch glimpses of ourselves every day. We will never escape it or ever deny it; the reflection will always remind us of the truth for every lie we may tell ourselves. The shadow that follows us–a second reflection that never abandons us–ages, grows, and changes with us. It bears every hidden truth and secret thought that we might not ever tell aloud. Choosing to reflect and reconnect to who we are, or to reject and reinvent ourselves: that is the choice which makes us terribly, terrifically human.
To be human is to be a universal nomad. The meaning of life itself is not just to live–not just to be alive. The meaning is ours to interpret for ourselves and to forever share with others, even if we remain unsure of what being human may truly mean. Just the definition may be enough to give us purpose.