Humans

The story of humanity is clumsy and marred with disgrace. Yet collectively we have never stopped striving for better. We steadily raise our standards and seek to live up to those standards.

Humans as creatures are flawed. We have greed, ignorance and arrogance to contend with.

We are also loving. We have forgiveness, resilience and profound creativity to work with.

Sometimes our high standards cause us to forget. We forget our own mistakes as we busily hold others to those standards. We forget that other people make mistakes and take their missteps as a personal offense. Life is hard. We make it harder by holding one another too firmly in the grip of should have’s and supposed to’s.

It is my belief high standards are important to our way forward as a civilization. As creatures we live UP to expectations. However holding ourselves and each other hostage to our personal interpretation of how life should be is destructive and causes a great deal of pain.

I wonder if the next chapter in the story of humanity could be a love story. A story of acceptance, patience and unabashed kindness. I wonder if we can shift our priorities from expectations to empathy. Perhaps we can trade some conflict for compassion and swap judgement for curious conversation. I believe we need this as much as any of the other things we strive for…and more so. I also believe we have this capacity. After all…we are quite an incredible bunch of primates!

KATE