On being human

Supposedly, hume is the origin of the word, meaning we are “of the earth.” Kind of hard to believe with the way we’re making it inhospitable, or maybe we’re just in a state of denial. In the same way, it seems we are in denial about technology being “of humans,” treating AI as alien as the humans creating them. No... I mean, as alien as the beings flying unidentified objects, that have either been obscured or protected by individuals in higher positions of power. Which, at that point, they might as well be aliens themselves.

Right, I’m supposed to be vulnerable. I guess I’m also in a state of denial. Denying that what ails me is anything more than the pain of what it is to be alive. The same as anyone else, I have desires to always have warmth, food, comfort, and everything else — the fights among family, the fears about disease, the unease regarding employment, seemingly arbitrary hormonal shifts, all seems trivial? And I don’t mean it lacks meaning, it’s much easier to spin meaning from drama. I just mean it’s trite, cliché, overplayed. These failures and fictions have been written about for centuries, albeit with varying levels of sophistication, but, really, can someone explain to me the difference between my depression amid a pandemic and another 20th century peasant’s? Haven’t other’s gone through their parent’s divorcing and their sibling cutting off communication? I’m not saying my circumstances are not special, I’m saying they are, despite what the media claims, in fact, precedented.

Maybe it sounds like I’ve just been parrying every potential opportunity to display some degree of vulnerability, but I promise I’m taking this seriously. My fears, currently, are deeply intertwined with my mortality, but not in the root word sense, not regarding the fears of death, rather, my fears are of being of this world; of living.

I am desperately afraid that I’ve been doing it wrong.