To Be Human

 Just recently I was having a conversation, via text message, with a young man I watched grow up. I dated his Mum for quite a while. I am extraordinarily fond of this young man.

And he was sharing with me about his being in Therapy. He had broken up with his girlfriend a while ago and was having difficulty dealing with the emotions that came with this.

He said:

"Yessir! Been going to therapy since NAME and I broke up, that, along with cessation of smoking/vices has made me feel much more emotionally in touch and alive. I was speaking with one of my friends the other day who was having a really hard time and I was shocked by how their emotions directly translated in my emotions, them being someone I care about and hate to see hurting. Really makes it much easier to connect with people for sure."

Followed by:

"It's been a very weird feeling to cry and experience emotions, as even in the past when NAME and I broke up or had fights I would never cry for more than an hour or two and then would just feel basically low energy."

And as I read this I must admit that I am very impressed by this young man. At his age I had no connection at all to my own feelings and no idea that I could express them. Asking for help? Not a chance in the world. And here he is showing how it is done.

After I read the above I sent the following reply:

"From my own experience I hope that you will continue. In America we have this lie that real men don't cry. And those that follow are usually damaged in some way. To be Human is to Feel".

I say that because I grew up in John Wayne's America. Where "Men are men, Sheep are scared, and Dogs are nervous". 😂

Nice little joke. And the reality is when I grew up it was with the toxic lie that "Real Men" never showed their feelings, never showed when they were scared, and NEVER, EVER, asked for help. To do any of that was to be weak. And "Girly".

I grew up in an environment of Toxic Masculinity that was so much a part of the fabric of our society that it was just the normal way of being. Bullying was a huge part of this as well. Which is part and parcel to Being Damaged.

But the biggest way of being damaged by all of this is that we learned to stuff our feelings away and deny them. When a person does that these feelings do not go away. They sit deep inside them rotting away until they build up and then some minor thing causes an explosion. And then they are bleeding all over everyone around them who do not deserve or understand what is really happening. Hurt feelings all around, and usually resentment also.

Some years into my "Adulthood" I finally began to do something about a life that I was either going to transform or just plain die to escape from. I was at the point of desperation that is the only real beginning of transformation for people like me. Which is why we call it "The Gift of Desperation".

And one of the first things that I was told I needed to do was get in touch with my feelings. And I "knew" that was the stupidest thing that I could do. I "knew" that my feelings were so dark and destructive that if I got in touch with them they would destroy me.

I was still ruled by FEAR.

Over a long period of time I was able to walk thru that fear and I was able to, slowly and gradually, get in touch with my feelings. Fits and starts, lots of backsliding. And I was finally able to really feel my feelings.

And I discovered that they were not the big scary thing that I had made them out to be. That they were only feelings. And all I had to do was walk thru them and feel them. They only were scary because I had never addressed them and they had piled on top of each other until I hit the breaking point.

And I discovered something else. To be Human, to be fully Human, one must feel their feelings. All of them. Because, as I said to the young man above, To be Human is to Feel.

And I do not get to pick and choose my feelings that I am going to feel either. I must feel all of them or shortly I will never get to feel any of them.

And that is what it means to Be Human. To Feel.

How Human are YOU today?