Open Letter to Me: On Being Human

If somebody says something that hurts your feelings, two things are happening: 1) the other party feels comfortable enough around you to say something with the ability to harm and 2) you regard this individual to be intimately related to you and thus allow them to hurt you.

Someone can only harm you if you allow them to. If you convince yourself of their utterly, insignificant value as a human being then, just maybe, you will not be hurt by inconsiderate words, by lack of understanding, or by the sum of small injustices.

The truth of the matter is that if you begin to see people as less than people for the mere fact that they act like human beings, then feeling anything at all will become a hypocrisy. Everyone deserves to be a human being, to be treated as such and to act as such. If we were to ever feel capable of stripping others down to mere husks and shells that cannot hurt us, then we ourselves would become husks and shells of human beings.

Everyone has problems and the inner turmoil is projected outwards, assaulting the sensitive, the alone, the receptive. Personally, I am a bit sensitive, with low confidence and a bit isolated in this segment of my life and sometimes I feel like lashing out and saying things with anger. That makes me human.

I try to forgive, I try to accept and I try to understand. When I see that other people don’t, it makes me uncomfortable, more isolated, and feeling victimized, quite frankly. The facts are that nothing is owed to anybody else. If I lead a life in which I try to treat others well and they decide to not treat me well, then that just IS. I can accept it or change for the worse. I can be less nice and then feel like I deserve the treatment I receive. But that would mean becoming part of the problem I perceive. That would mean becoming one more dark cloud, striking out at random, creating more dark clouds.

To go on, one must accept all that is and normatively visualize a beautiful world. Everyone deserves to be loved and those you may think do not, need it most of all. In order to feel like you deserve love, too, is to strive to be someone you respect and be like someone you would eagerly love.

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