Journal #19: Human Being

Maya Angelou, a very influential black woman, once said: 

"I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me"

I love the word 'human'. I rarely use the word 'person' in speech anymore because it is such a habit for me to refer to human beings as humans because that is what we are. In the world of anthropology we often times say that we are studying peoples and cultures which is true but the nitty gritty is that we are simply studying human beings. everything about them. about us. Thinking about this cross cultural experience, I have often found myself wondering what life is going to be like living amongst "them", "the Ghanaians" etc but who am I to think that way. Just because I am unfamiliar with the land those humans live on, the language those humans speak, the culture and society those humans embody, does not mean that they are not just like me. A human being. This thought kind of trails from my last post and I really think that as we are all seeking to find out what our existence here on earth really means, we are also just trying to figure out day by day what it means to be a human being. The quote by Maya says, 'nothing human can be alien to me', this seems like it is so far fetched because it is impossible to understand everything about every human being. Nor can we all contain the same knowledge or the world as we know it would cease to have variety and it would not go round the way that it does (in some cases that may not be a bad thing but that seems to be where Communism stems from. variety is very important in this world). There are so many things that I think I understand that I really do not. So many things that I wish to know in this world but that I may not have the opportunity to experience or find out. But that does not mean that I should be afraid of them or that I should feel like they are so foreign or 'alien' to me. There is so much to a human being that I feel like I cannot even delve deeply enough into my thoughts about us for this blog post. It could last forever. I will say this though, every single thing that I experience day by day teaches me a little bit more about human being. Whether we realize it or not we are constantly being bombarded with ideas of the way things should and shouldn't be but really, why does that matter? Why can't human beings just be who they are without the media or the next door neighbor judging their every move. At one point or another I am sure we have all felt like an alien looking in from the outside which is how I am sure I am going to feel at times when I am in Ghana but I also have the knowledge and the power to realize that I am just like those human beings who I will be associating with. It may be a different experience than that which I have been used to for my whole life but it wont really be different. My life will still be based off of the relationships I build with other human beings and how that relationship affects that one and so on. Nothing in this life that is human really is anything that I cannot handle or identify with because I am a human myself. Thank you Maya for helping me to identify that.