Being Human

Have you ever wondered why we use the term human being? We don’t say fish being or bird being , so why do we say human being?

The term homo sapiens is Latin for ‘wise human’ or ‘knowing human’. (Is this an oxymoron, like ‘military intelligence’?) I suppose that makes sense from a scientific perspective, so I understand its use . . . sort of.

But when I tried to look into the origin of the term human being, I could only find that the concept of ‘being’ with regards to humans came into existence during the 1700s. Not much to go on.

I saw a commercial recently, where someone said, ‘I am not a human doing or a human thinking. I am a human being.’ What a beautiful statement – so simple, so pure.

The word being means simply the state of existing. It specifically denotes that which is, as opposed to that which is not, or that which only seems to be. This is really important. Think about how often we get the ‘being’ mixed up with the ‘seeming’. The two are so vastly different, and yet tricky to differentiate. The ‘seeming’ is often confused with the ‘being’, which leads to divisiveness (some of it intentional), misunderstanding, and suffering. And yet a fish or a bird does not participate in these uncertainties. They are naturally in a state of oneness with being, unlike humans who get lost in the seeming.

I have hope that the human race, that is, all human beings, will someday honour the being of things, and be able to spot when the seeming of things obstructs the true nature of our existence.