Week 30: Just a bug

Picture this: A sunny Friday afternoon. You are on the highway driving out of town for a weekend rendezvous with your old time buddies listening to your favorite classic jam.

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Suddenly a bug crushes on your windscreen splattering its green intestines blotching a small corner of your crystal clear view.

Highly likely than not - without even butting an eyelid, you simply mechanically turn on the wipers to restore your view as the life of the bug fleets away.

It's tough to admit - but this is eerily similar to the end of our human existence when played out to the whole universe. Our individual existence is just but a tiny bug and when we eventually crush out of earth, highly likely than not, without even butting an eyelid - life moves on. 

How then do we make meaning of our lives? And not recoil to a bug like existence?

In spoken word, philosopher Cornel West brings this question to life:

" What does it mean to be featherless two-legged linguistically conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose bodies will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms?" Cornel West

He unflinchingly answers that the human person has to reconcile to the definition and root of the word human which reveals the true nature of our existence.

The Cambridge dictionary defines Human as: being, relating to, or belonging to a person or to people as opposed to animals (emphasizing the event, behavior or item of necessity is connected to the human person).

The etymology (root) of the word Human is traced to the Latin word “Humus,” meaning earth or ground. In his pioneering treatise of scientizing human society from cradle to grave, Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico conceptualized the human condition as deeply linked to burial.

It's easy to see the connection of the definition and etymology of "Human" to Vico's contextualization of human condition as that of burial in the sense of "returning back to earth"

Cornel West simplifies "the word human comes from the Latin humando which means 'burying' "

Interestingly, another word that comes from the Latin root Humus is humility - "Humilitas" - Insignificance, unimportance (just like the bug on the windscreen!).

The Merriam Webster defines Humility as "Freedom from pride or arrogance"

To acknowledge our true nature of being human awakens the consciousness of burial and the inevitable separation from - our physical existence, our positions, our power, our ideologies, our perspectives. This awareness humbles us to the inevitability of our insignificance.

Our existence can therefore not find true meaning in insignificant selves! Our egoistic entrapments of our positions, ideas and powers are meaningless. Meaning comes in the burial so as to birth another life. 

This could possibly explain why those in "noble professions" such as mothers, teachers and nurses whose every day engagement is about consciously caring for and bringing up the other are perceived to age gracefully and live long contented lives!

Human life only finds meaning in the light of the other that we bring forth! Like a breathtaking symphony the mark of a meaningful human existence is evidenced when we bury - our egos, ideas, positions, powers, self....and the music of the other (next leader, student, child, generation) only gets richer.