What is it to be human?

WHAT IT IS TO BE HUMAN

Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. -Pema Chodron

I'm here listening to PT and his son Cypress talking while they cook up a steak (slathered in liquid smoke drenched salt and garlic paste). Its delicious, and I'm eager to share food w/ them. But I'm lost in thought these days. I'm fired up thinking about curriculum and ideas and people and also, about finding myself. It's as though energy is building, bubbling, surging out through my very core. I am calling myself Indigo Crow. I want to create. I want to create. I want to live passionately, spiritually, aesthetically, healthily, peacefully. I want to tell stories. I want to teach through story and I want to speak. I want to connect with humans. Can I continue to live here with PT? He wonders as much as I do. We are weary of the arguments. We are weary of the struggle, but are we able to see ourselves with humor and with kindness? I am painting. I want to create with all mediums. I'm going to get involved w/ a theater group. I collect sea glass, rocks, driftwood. I want to create goddesses. I want to move into this next phase of my life with joy and fearlessness.


I think about this idea of transformation all the time. How do I want to present myself to the world for the rest of my wild and passionate life? Will I find another human to share intimacy that is physical and close? Will PT and I find it? Maybe. But realistically, its not something PT wants. I don't believe he is interested in a life of reflection and service and love that is open and nurturing and courageous and real. In truth, I have come to see him as a man gripped by fear who behaves more like a cornered tiger who snarls with frightened reaction even when the coast is completely clear. He talks about others who are "drunks" with disdain even though he himself is a sloppy, uninteresting drunk himself, several times a week. Do I have a right to be disdainful? For all I know he drinks because I eat. Do I eat because he drinks?