BROTHERS AND SISTERS ALL
The Virtue of Realizing That You Are Human
You can transform yourself with this
Have you ever had the experience of running across a quotation that said something that you sorta knew but couldn’t put into words? It’s a moment of surprise and delight.
This happened to me with a quotation by the Roman poet and playwright Publius Terentius:
Nothing human is entirely foreign to me
(A literal translation from Greek is “I am a human being, so nothing human is strange to me”, but I prefer the one above.)
What does this mean?
It means that I am capable of doing anything another human being has ever done. It doesn’t mean that I as I am today would cheat or lie or kill. What it does mean is that I am a human being who was born in a certain place and culture, had certain parents, and lived through a certain set of experiences. If I had been born and lived in that exact same way, the chances that I would act differently are actually quite low. How could it be otherwise?
Nothing human is entirely foreign to me.
As a human being I am not that special, and I should temper my pride in my virtue and my accomplishments. I can’t be so righteous that I can totally dismiss another as being less than human or not deserving to live.
Realizing these things has profound benefits
You can be less judgmental, which means you will experience a lot less anger. You can be more compassionate, which opens you to connect meaningfully to other people. You can have an easier time of forgiving someone, which will feel better and allow you to retain a relationship with that other person.
Another human being, through culture or circumstances, can still be very foreign to you but not entirely so. You are a human being, and everyone is your fellow traveler. Like every other human who has ever existed, you were born and you will die. You want to be happy, and you want to avoid suffering.
You are alive. You are a part of the Great Human Pageant. And if you choose to believe this, you are not alone.
