Humans

An existential meditation in free-verse

I wonder. Is it that we humans, each and all of us, are common; the same, in our individuality? Or are we, each and all of us, individual; different, in our commonality?

I don’t think it matters how to describe the human existential reality. For each and all of us are made from not similar, but precisely the same “stuff” of molecules and elements, of tissues and cells. Yes, in varying degrees, person to person, yet in no person uncommon to any other person.

Nevertheless, manifold are the paths of divergence among us and the canyons of difference between us:

In our families of origin tracing back eons of generations…

In our nurturance and worldly experience…

In our histories and memories…

In our observations and opinions…

In our beliefs and all that we believe to be true.

Even more, each and all of us, in our being, daily adds to our histories and memories, our observations and opinions, our beliefs and all that we believe to be true; which is another way of saying that we, each and all of us, always are becoming. We change.

Given all this (meaning, for me, that any one of us can resemble, that is, to seem to be like any other one of us, but any one of us never can be any other one of us), it is a mystery to me (beyond my human comprehending) and a miracle to me (beyond my human creating) how any one of us can be with any other one of us.

Yet we humans continue to strive to do that.

Perhaps, then, it is our resemblances (which neither are nor can be complete likenesses) one to another, one with another, and whether some are consciously named whilst others unconsciously known, that allow each of us with another one or with others of us to risk drawing close enough that parallel our divergent paths might be and to build bridges across our canyons of difference that, though they never completely (can) meet, we, at least, can stand in hailing sight.

© 2021 PRA