To Be or Not to Be

There is no single experience that defines what it is to be human, but there are many entities that commonly add to the experience. Part of the journey that is being human entails cognitive reasoning and questioning, such as considering one’s origins, as Karen Armstrong say humans do in her work A Short History of Myth. Humans’ cognitive functioning also leads to communication, whether it be verbal, written, or in some other form. Communication and interaction with others is a large part of the human experience, and to understand communication with one another, human beings must use both hemispheres of their brains (The Alphabet vs. the Goddess). This use of the brain’s hemispheres, together with the way the hemispheres function on their own, is all part being a human being. The human mind is capable not only of understanding direct communication from person to person, but also communication through other means, such as stories. Many of these stories try back into the aforementioned question of human origins. Questions of the origins of human beings are often answer by origin myths, frequently found in religious texts, such as the creation story told in Genesis.

The experience of being human cannot be thought of as definitive, simple because each individual has a unique progression through humanity, but there are certain recognizable aspects. Two very human connections to the world exist in the human relationship to nature, religion, and sacred space. These three facets of humanity are often quite intertwined. For example, if one studies the Aborigine people of Australia, it can be seen that the places they hold sacred, and places they find spiritual, are all very much in nature.  As Nigel Spivey writes in “How Art Made the World: Second Nature,” in the religion of the Algonquian people of Canada “ancestral spirits are deemed to reside in a tree of a boulder.” These are two examples of many in which religious sacred spaces are found in nature. Additionally to holding it sacred, there is another relationship between people and nature that is distinctive of humanity. For part of being human is the desire to control or manipulate things, and nature is often at the receiving end of this desire. This can be seen in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, through the character of Prospero, who not only controls the weather, but also uses it to control other people.

Love shall forever be a prevailing part of the experience of being human, and tied up with love, is beauty. Human beings feel love- for others, for themselves, for material objects. Regardless of what the love is felt for, it is a universal emotion, shared by people across cultures, and throughout time. This is seen through love poetry, a means of expressing love that is found from Ancient Egyptian cultures, to modern day American teenagers. People’s expressions of love tie back to human communication and story telling. For through all aspects of being human, the same actions apply. There are different types of love, though the one most commonly thought of in the experience of being human is that of romantic love, and it is this type of love that so much of the writing of love are written about. In addition to love poetry, there are also complete books, such as The Art of Courtly Love. Love is an extremely complicated part of being human, and equally complex is the human idea of beauty. Sometimes only surface beauty is viewed as important, as seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray, while others believe only inner beauty matters. The individual experience of discovering what true beauty means to oneself is part of the journey of being human.

Human morality and ethics are an important part of the human experience. A human being’s moral and ethical code is part of what defines an individual, as is where the individual’s moral code comes from. Many people believe God defines what is moral, and they seek to follow the moral codes presented by their religions. The Judeo-Christian Bible contains “The Ten Commandments,” a code created by God, which contains commandments about morally right actions. This Bible also includes “The Holiness Code,” which further expands on the rules for living morally presented in the Ten Commandments. Later, in the Christian Bible, “The Sermon on then Mount,” gives an even more in-depth elaboration on the Ten Commandments. In the Sermon, Jesus tries to clarify the Ten Commandments, and eliminate misunderstandings that have come from others’ interpretation of the commandments. While most people do not follow the Commandments exactly, they still lay the foundation for the personal moral code of many people. Often the moral code of individuals who do not subscribed to a Judeo-Christian religion, or even some other religion, for there are many religious codes pertaining to morality, closely resembles that of and individual who does try to follow the code, for the human experience often leads to a similar sense of personally morality. Of course, there are others who do not subscribed to this type of moral code. While many religious moral codes entail caring for other people, there are also those, such as Ayn Rand, who believe in doing only what is best for oneself. Individuals with a more selfish moral code have a very different experience of being human than those who believe in the importance of respecting and caring for others.

The Experience of being human begins at birth and ends at death. However, before death there may be steps toward the conclusion of the experience. One occurrence that may happen before death is a real understanding of oneself. When looking at the hero’s journey, an archetypal pattern followed by a hero, as described in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this self understanding may occur between leaving the abyss and crossing the return threshold. It is here that the hero may discover what his existence means to him. The hero’s journey is not just applied to stereotypical heroes, the people out fighting evil in dramatic ways, but also to regular people, leading everyday lives. So, when regular people leave their abysses, and cross their return thresholds, they also may discover the meaning of their existences, or the truth of who they are. In Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Hamlet deeply ponders the meaning of human existence while he is in his own abyss. As Hamlet asks himself, “to be or not to be,” he is contemplating what his life is worth, or if it is really worth anything. And while most people do not consider this question with such an eloquent soliloquy as Hamlet does, it is a common topic people contemplate while searching for the meaning of their lives. The experience and understanding of being human is highly individualize, and yet when comparing personal lives, the journey through humanity is found to be remarkably similar for many.