All throughout our lives, we have the privilege of being able to witness all of the human experience that has driven behavior from the beginning of time.
From our Freudian id impulses of hunger and desire, to our higher complex cognition, we don’t have to look anywhere other than within ourselves to observe the forces that have shaped humanity over millennia.
Civilizations have come and go, inventions have change the world, and wars have decimated nations. All of these were the result of human beings like you and me, dealing with the same thoughts and emotions that you and I deal with on a daily basis.
None of these experiences are unique to you or me.
They've been part and parcel of the human experience for thousands of years. It just so happens that today, you and I get to be here to witness them. We don't know if we'll be around tomorrow. So we might as well embrace it while we're here.
But that's not how we think about our experience. We have a really hard time in here. We feel jealousy and it hurts. We feel anger and we want to explode. We experience sadness as a hole in our heart. None of this feels like a privilege.
We don't see it as a gift to be able to witness how the human body, mind, and emotions are affected by the outside world. We just see it as pain, and the occasional moment of joy or clarity.
It doesn't have to be this way.
We can start to appreciate what it means to be human. We can turn the paradigm on its head and start to appreciate that when things are difficult, we're simply in here experiencing things being difficult.
Rather than being propelled by anger, we can start to watch what happens to the human psyche and body when it's angry.
Instead of being consumed by sadness, we can experience the richness of our heart when it's playing deep chords of sorrow.
Beneath all of the thoughts and emotions, there is a quality in you that knows you're experiencing thoughts and emotions. That's the only part of you that never changes.
That is you.
Because while thoughts come and go, emotions wax and wane, and the outside world continues to evolve, you don't. You simply go along for the ride, and never cease to not be there.
Today, why not embrace the miracle of being present on a piece of dirt, spinning in a galaxy, watching a human live out its life? Pretty cool if you look at it that way, no?
Live with substance!
Gabe Orlowitz
