Things That Humanize Us

It is dif­fi­cult not to go numb these days. We have enough to eat, though mostly of a few choices from pre­dictable menus. We do not taste food like we used to — like when we were kids. Our sched­ules fill up until our focus goes from the event we are attend­ing to the dis­tract­ing antic­i­pa­tion of the next event. We live just enough into the future to be obliv­i­ous to where we are now. There are enough unre­solved issues and con­flicts to pre­oc­cupy us, so that we do not even notice how we arrived at a par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tion. We even for­get which route we took. Did I stop at the last stop sign, or did I just run right through it? I do not remem­ber any­one honk­ing, so maybe I stopped. I for­got my cell phone again. What was I think­ing? I even for­got what I for­got.
It begins to dawn on us that we are liv­ing with all of the unno­ticed effi­ciency of a sep­tic tank aer­a­tor pump. We are only aware when it (life) breaks — which is exactly the point. We for­get that we are and have bod­ies until we get the flu. A good old fash­ioned flat tire will reac­quaint you with the car and the nice peo­ple down at the tire shop. A lit­tle bit of a sun­burn is all it takes to remind you of the chang­ing sea­sons. For a moment, you wake up to life. Some­thing human­iz­ing hap­pened — though ever so brief. In that moment of aware­ness, you feel truly alive again.
In Eng­land there is a group of arm­chair philoso­phers that have built a whole sys­tem of liv­ing around the aware­ness of those fleet­ing moments. They have their own lit­er­a­ture and seem to have a spe­cial kind of fel­low­ship. They are like chil­dren at play in a robot fac­tory. There is a twin­kle in their eyes. Their prac­tice of unplug­ging from the numb­ing rou­tines would make them the envy of the neigh­bor­hood, but the neigh­bors are so lost in their monot­ony that they can­not even feel envy. No won­der Pink Floyd used so many drab col­ors in his rock clas­sic “The Wall” when depict­ing the loss of soul of con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish life.
Break a shoe lace; give some­thing away; vol­un­teer some time; turn off the TV; go for a walk; adopt a pet; call a friend; wash your car; clean out your closet; eat a meal so spicy that your nose runs; lis­ten to a new style of music (Brazil­ian is a good start); ignore the phone. Do the unpre­dictable. Stop choos­ing the paths of least resis­tance. Say some­thing you have never said before. Find your human­ity again!