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Humans are Exhausting
But, I’m gonna love ‘em anyway
I’ve been contemplating having a tee-shirt made that reads: “humans are exhausting.” Some days, I just can’t muster a feeling of openness towards some people. I imagine this tee-shirt serving as subtle armor on those days.
When I encounter someone who exhausts me and don’t have much in my compassion reserves — I close up. My immediate reaction is to switch to autopilot, where my intellect works hard to categorize a person or people into boxes. When I’m mindful, though, I can close up temporarily to recalibrate without judging myself or others.
Closing up isn’t a character flaw, its survival instinct. Humans are hardwired to assess the world for threats. In this “fight, flight, or freeze” state, we switch out of the part of ourselves where reason, self-awareness, and love reside, and switch into the part of ourselves that fights for power, safety, and resources.
It’s critical that we maintain a healthy sense of fight or we’ll struggle to thrive, let alone survive in the world. Our trouble is that most of us aren’t working with a healthy sense of fight (it’s rarely modeled for us) and our ability to accurately assess for threats is made more difficult by a society steeped in disinformation.
