Seems like such a simple question, doesn’t it? Yet, step back and look at the history of humanity and it is clear–this isn’t a simple question at all. History includes slavery, genocide, the Holocaust and all sorts of ways that humans have chosen to look at other humans and deny them the right to be human and live their lives. The recent events in Charlottesville, VA where white supremacists want to insist that they are a superior human to others is just one more challenge to this basic question: What does it mean to be human?”
Answering this question for your SELF will have a profound impact on the way your live your life. What history shows us is that humans use all sorts of ‘descriptors’ to define themselves as humans–and others as ‘not human’. The white supremacists clearly think that ‘white’ is the best way to define human. Others might use being rich as the best way to define human. Men may think they’re superior to women simply by being born with a penis. What I’m getting at here is that many of us use ‘descriptors’–white vs. black (hispanic, asian etc.), rich vs. poor, men vs. women, christian vs. muslim, straight vs. lgbtq as the way to define ourselves as humans and others as ‘not human’. But the problem with all these descriptors is that they infer that being a human is matter of finding your place in the hierarchy of better than or less than. This has been going on for so long, many people take it for granted that this is the way to define humans.
But it is not. All of those descriptors having nothing to do with our being a human. They’re all artificial labels we’ve created over time as ways to separate ourselves from others. They keep us at each other’s throats and lead us to live lives that leave us all hurting. Because to be ‘better than’ infers there are ‘less than’ humans but underneath that everyone lives in tension and fear.
Instead, here at the Life Puzzle Center–our goal is to help you see that being a human is an on-going, growing journey to wholeness. To be a human means to understand your SELF as a physical, emotional, thinking, sexual and spiritual being and at the same time, to understand that every other human you meet is also a physical, emotional, thinking, sexual and spiritual being on their own on-going, growing journey. There is no better than or less than. The Life Puzzle is a universal model–a way to understand your SELF as a human and the way to understand everyone you meet too. We all have the same 16 core areas, 5 edges that create that SELF and yet no two of us will put them together in exactly the same way. Thus–being a human means enabling yourself and everyone you meet the opportunity to build their Life Puzzle–a piece at a time with the whole (human) YOU in mind.