When in doubt, be a human

Growing up, I would watch the news and hear bold declarations of right and wrong, with scary stories and even scarier pictures convincing me the world is a dangerous place. 

From time to time I would get wrapped up in a single stance, adopt a lens, and see the world through the side I had chosen. I would become angered and judgmental about entire groups of people and their viewpoints - taking everything quite personally and using it to fuel my own fears. 

When I would try to engage my father in a conversation or debate, he would simply wave his hand dismissively and state, “It’s all just politics.”

Some perspective…

My father grew up in the middle of a civil war in South Lebanon. This war took place only 50 years after another conflict - the fall of the Ottoman Empire - which debilitated and killed half of the country.

The civil war itself was ultimately a religious war between the Muslim and Christian political parties within Lebanon, however it was made much more complicated by the Palestinian - Israeli relationship which, for a variety of reasons and in a variety of different ways, created more fighting and violence within Lebanese borders.

When my father was a child, a bomb hit his home while my grandmother and her children were still inside. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. The family fled across the country and rode out the next ten years in disjointed groupings of family member dispersed across Lebanon.

If anyone has a billion reasons to be angry at and suspicious of humanity, it’s my grandparents. The one incident with their house was not a unique situation, and in many cases family members and loved ones of theirs died at the hands of the fighting going on around them. For decades, they lived through the worst of what humans can create.

And yet, my grandparents are two of the most charitable, kind, and loving people I know. My grandmother will, until her dying day, feed every single mouth that comes to her house and give money to every single person who asks for it. (Sorry everyone, she doesn’t have venmo yet!) Last year, when I went to Lebanon, my grandfather insisted on driving an extra 15 minutes to a gas station in a neighboring village because they gave a portion of their proceeds to charity.

These are just a few examples, but they highlight a clear choice that my grandparents made, and continue to make. Even though their lives were disrupted, uprooted, and scarred by the war, they saw it for what it was - a matter of politics. And they refused to let the politics impact how they show up to the world as human beings. 

We have a choice to make

Many of us are seeing politics play out in huge ways that we have not personally experienced in our lifetimes. It is chaotic, confusing, and painful. Each day brings us many groups of people to be angry at or pass judgements about. 

The effects can be personally damaging, even if we aren’t engaging externally with the narrative. When we let fear and vitriol build up within us, we are left feeling more afraid, more enraged, and most importantly - we start to believe that we are alone. 

We may even begin to hoard our humanity - not out of ill will to others - but due to a survivalist mindset built on the misconception that other humans, as a whole, are dangerous. 

I have been there, and I know others who have as well. It’s not a pleasant place to be. And it is entirely avoidable. 

How do you want to show up in this world?

To take a page out of my father’s book - a lot of the pain we are experiencing right now boils down to politics. Pure and simple.

Are politics important? Yes. Many of you are able to engage regularly on a political level and help shift the course of our future - and that’s amazing. 

However, politics are not synonymous with humanity. Humanity is about, well, the human. It’s about how your neighbor is a human being with joys and struggles and a family. And their family is comprised of human beings with their own set of joys and struggles. 

Choosing to see humanity in a sea of political conflict is about seeing the person in front of you for what they are - a fellow human with successes and failures and good days and bad days. It’s about focusing on the similarities first, before acknowledging the differences (not vice versa).

It’s definitely a practice, and it’s not always easy. However, I promise it’s worth it. 

The more you practice focusing on the human beings around you, on acknowledging them for who they are, on lifting them up when they’re down - the less isolated you will feel and the less afraid you will become. 

And a reminder that a huge part of giving to others is receiving from others. So, if you are depleted and exhausted and are the one who needs the lifting up - make sure that when others offer help or support that you take it. Often times, our own discomfort with receiving can lead us to lift others up at our own expense, which then perpetuates that feeling of isolation and fear. That’s not what we are going for here.

Leaning into your humanity means both being able to give and needing help. The two are not mutually exclusive and both need to happen to complete the circuit.

I do not know what will happen next week, or next month, or next year. No matter what happens, in the midst of all the noise and chaos, we all get to choose how we are showing up to the world each day and who we are being in it.

At the end of the day, that’s really what matters. The rest is all noise, and it too shall pass.