What it means to be a person
I’ve certainly been struggling with it
You ever have those bad days that turn into bad weeks and then bad months? You know, where you mess up your sleep schedule with video games, then you learn that some coworkers and friends are being laid off, then you miss work because of PTSD nightmares, and to top it all off you kiss a girl with a boyfriend?
No, just me?
Life is hard. This isn’t news, and it’s barely worth repeating. But it’s not the full picture. Sometimes it seems like that’s all life is. Life = difficulty. But of course, on further examination, there’s so much more to it. The problem is finding the time to examine.
Part of being a person is being alive and just kind of existing within society. And sometimes that’s hard enough, especially in a divisive political climate, a challenging work environment, a frustrating personal life, and who knows how many medical ailments we may encounter along the way. There’s a lot we adults have to manage. And some of us have kids! Oof!
Beyond that, though, we all strive to accomplish. Whether that’s establishing a good life for ourselves and our family, mastering a skill, or engaging better with our community, there’s something terribly human about a desire to achieve. I don’t mean to say we’re all Type A ambitious, or that we should be, or that we shouldn’t be. I just mean to call our attention towards that fact that we all have goals. We all have things we want to do, ways we want our lives to be.
But we’re not thinking machines or accomplishment machines. We really are feeling machines that think, to paraphrase Damásio. And sometimes we don’t feel that our feelings even make sense! Or is it that we don’t think our feelings make sense? Does that make sense?
Basically, we don’t understand ourselves. But we certainly want to. And our desire to close the gap between knowledge and reality often results in us believing false stories about ourselves, or giving into our fears.
“You’re not enough.”
Is that your mind speaking?
That’s certainly what my mind has been saying. “You’re not good enough. You knew she had a boyfriend, and you still did what you did.”
Boy, I really wish my mind would stop saying that.
Because you are enough. You are enough. You are. You don’t need to do anything special to be worthy of care. You don’t need to save the world (or even a single puppy) to earn love and kindness. You don’t need to donate a certain amount of money or time in order to feel good about yourself. You are enough. I am enough, and you are enough.
This is quite easy for me to say to you: I can’t see you, I’ll probably never see you, and if I really want to I can just delete this whole post and pretend it never happened. (We’re pretending the Wayback Machine doesn’t exist, of course.)
It’s a whole nother ordeal to tell it to myself. How can I possibly be enough? I spend so much time lounging about, I barely exercise, I don’t respond to my friends all that much, I haven’t written an article for weeks, and I’ve spent months talking about AI systems that I’ve never tried building myself! I’m lazy, weak, unkind, apathetic, and a fraud. And I’m enough? Me? Really?
Yes, really. Because beyond the things I’ve mentioned so far, I’ve also done some good things. I think.
I’m still working on this.
I’m prioritizing “being a person” over “being a persona” right now. Which means I won’t write now. Sorry not sorry for that wonderful pun! 🤓 But yes, this is a longwinded way of saying I’m taking a break. I could’ve just silently stopped writing, but then again that’s what I’ve been doing for weeks and it just hasn’t felt good. I’ve needed some closure, needed to give you all some closure (because maybe that’ll make me feel like I’m good enough), and needed to put a lot of these thoughts on paper.
I’ll see you later!
P.S. Don’t forget: You’re good enough. 🥰
