Being Human Isn’t Perfect

Here are some truths about the human experience. We need connection with others for survival, more than any other animal species. We learn from our mistakes and we course-correct (which is so incredibly cool)! We are emotionally and physically affected by our environments. When our environment is stressful, it affects our ability to fight infection and it even can cause chronic illness. Like nature, we cycle throughout our lives. We all experience hardship and illness; these experiences are natural to life.

Why then, do we fight these things that make us who we are? We feel bad about ourselves when we need help. We beat ourselves up for making mistakes. We think that we should not be affected by others, and we fight against our nature. We even somehow believe that we shouldn’t have challenges and illnesses in our lives. Somehow, we believe that we should be superhuman, not having to deal with all of these messy realities. 

It is easy to see that these messages come from a wide variety of places and there are even certain industries that feed us these messages and have us striving for perfection. As a practitioner and teacher in the healing space, I feel that sometimes we can leave people with the impression that if they just do more, read more, and seek more, they will be immune to natural human challenges. That impression is far from the truth!

What would life be like if we truly accepted our humanity? We might be more willing to ask others for help when we need it. We might give ourselves more grace and tenderness when we are not feeling well and we would extend this to others too. Accepting our true nature can allow us to live harmoniously, not perfectly, but in balance, facing what is actually happening without judgment.