The Skill of Being Human

There is a fine balance to being human.

To live in the fast-moving stream of life.

To carve a path through the denseness of the world.

To meet responsibility, survival, creation, and momentum head-on.

And at the same time, to cultivate the essential qualities of what it means to be human:

love, laughter, joy, prosperity, connection, and community.

This balance is no small feat.

It is a skill - one that requires presence, discernment, and deep inner awareness.

Layered on top of our daily habits and learned skills is something far less visible, yet profoundly influential: the quiet, aching void of belonging. The feeling that we are alone. That we must prove ourselves. That there must be a reason we are here, doing what we do, being who we are.

This longing - to belong, to be chosen, to be held - often drives us to think, act, and react in ways that pull us even further from ourselves.

That hunger disguises itself as need.

As something missing.

As something outside of us that we must acquire in order to feel whole.

But the truth is simpler - and far more confronting:

We are already complete.

Even when we might feel lacking in, or broken, we are whole.

Until this truth is felt, not just understood, we will continue searching, consuming, projecting, and expecting. We will look to people, relationships, achievements, and identities to give us what we believe we lack.

Yet no thing - and no person - outside of you can give you anything you do not already carry within.

Read that again….

No thing - and no person - outside of you can give you anything you do not already carry within.

This realization is massive.

And few ever truly arrive there.

It is the difference between

“You complete me”

and

“You have no power over me.”

When you meet your own emotional and spiritual needs fully, you are no longer driven by a thirst that can never be quenched. You stop seeking fulfillment through grasping, approval, or attachment.

You fill that well yourself.

This does not mean we don’t need community.

It does not mean we don’t need purpose, or support, or relationship.

A garden does not grow in isolation.

It requires soil, water, sun, wind, insects, and seasons.

What it does mean is that the roots are yours.

Your relationships - especially the ones that receive your intimate, sacred parts - are chosen from wholeness, not hunger. With or without anyone else, you feel loved. You feel enough. You walk your path with clarity and authenticity.

You stop consuming love, and you start being it - regardless of who receives it, or whether anyone does at all.

From this place, the communities you support, the friendships you nurture, and the partnerships you enter into become richer, steadier, and more nourishing. You attract others who stand in their own wholeness.

Together, you web.

You weave.

You grow.

Getting there is a practice.

It takes time.

It takes effort.

It takes learning when to quiet the inner noise and allow space for your true voice to rise.

It takes practicing silence.

Real silence.

Stillness.

Allowing.

It takes getting to know who you are without the constant grind of external living and external validation. It takes seeking guidance - sometimes from spiritual healers, sometimes from teachers; medicine people who have throughout antiquity, guided people to release the layers that obscure their true natures.

The patterns that keep you saying yes when you mean no.

The reactions that aren’t aligned with who you truly are.

The behaviors born from fear rather than truth.

These are what you need to seek, and let go.

As humans, we all dance in the darkness.

Some longer than others.

But dancing in the dark does not mean we must live there - unless we choose to.

Exploring the ways out is essential. Bringing light to codependency, attachment, reactivity, and the survival strategies we adopt when we are disconnected from our inner strength is not weakness - it is courage.

This work matters.

Because only when we belong to ourselves - fully and without condition - can we truly know what it means to belong anywhere else.

And from that place, life stops being something we chase…but the ground from which we grow.