How To Human

Listen to this poem:

Parents teach their children how to human
speaking in confident-sounding voices
to hide the fact that they do not know how to human.

Self-help gurus write books called How To Human
which they promote on talk shows with confident-sounding voices
to hide the fact that they are terrified.

Pundits tell us all how everyone should be humaning
speaking with confident-sounding voices
to hide the fact that they’ve been faking it this whole time.

Immense philosophical treatises have been written,
world-shaping religious texts authored,
claiming to know, claiming to have the answers
to the question of how to human.

And beneath all those confident-sounding answers,
there is imposter syndrome.
There is confusion.
There is anxiety.
There is fear of being recognized
as one more clueless ape mutant
in a world of clueless ape mutants.

And beneath all that,
beneath the confident sounding How To Human stories,
beneath all the imposter syndrome and confusion and anxiety
and fear of being found out,
there is humaning.
Just there, unembellished,
in all its sweating, belching, eating shitting glory.

The human itself does not know how to human.
It just humans.
The air goes in and out,
the food goes in and out,
one foot follows the other,
and then one day it lies down
and doesn’t get back up again.

The humaning does not need meaning.
The humaning does not need purpose.
The humaning does not need worthiness.
The humaning does not need accomplishment.
The humaning does not need goals.
The humaning does not need the weird “Am I humaning right?” soundtrack
riding around on its back all the time
like some kind of freaky parasite.

The humaning is an end in itself.
All its fleshy pleasurepain.
All its juicy sadnessjoy.
All its crackling sexualitycreativity.
The ineffable rune whales swimming in its depths.
The prismatic titans fucking in its forehead.
The ecstatic moaning of its veins as blood plunges through them.
The great AUM of the cosmos reverberating in its bones.

Nobody know how to human,
not even humaning itself.
But the humaning happens anyway.
The humaning always happens anyway.

We can let go of our weird parasites
and trust that.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/how-to-human