Taking Pleasure in Our Common Humanness

IT’S A HUMBLING REALITY BEING A HUMAN BEING. Recently, as my football side was none-and-two and my former wife’s was two-and-none, both being rival Western Australian teams, it was too good an opportunity for her to not provide a friendly jibe—okay, wisdom demands I concede on that one... for now (not that I’m that passionate about football these days).

But life is one of swings and roundabouts. There will always be times when we’re not fairing so well in some areas whilst doing well in others—it seems a condition of being human.

When the football side loses—even though I’m only moderately passionate—there is still some level of grief involved. Yet, this is quite a crazy prospect when I consider the really important sources of grief in life. I’ve got to laugh at myself.

I find it such a refreshing thing to simply have a good laugh at myself. Taking ourselves seriously must surely have its limits.

The fallibility of being human is part of the joy of the same condition. And though it’s not an excuse for mediocrity, making silly mistakes and gaffes is our stock-in-trade, surely.

But having a joy in our weaknesses takes a lot of pressure off, as the pretentious veneer shatters under a calm and safely strong truth of persona.

None of us needs to be perfect. We should be as we are, and provided we’re loving and appropriately humble with our fellows, we really have no reason to put on a hard-to-maintain façade.

We take pleasure in our humanness when the heat is off what people think of us, and how that could affect us. We’re free to have the relationships we’ve always wanted, free to truly listen into others because we’re profoundly less negatively self-aware and hence less self-absorbed.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.