The Human Condition
Introduction: Life is not simply what happens to us. It is also how we come to understand what has happened, what we carry forward, and how we choose to participate in what comes next.
By Newman
Forward
My reflection series on the complicated business of being human is about a shy kid who learned how to observe.
There’s something particularly meaningful about the relationship between grief and the human condition that captivates me.
At looking closer, grief is not a separate compartment of life that we visit only when someone dies. It is also woven into our experiences surrounding change, relationships, expectations, identity, and the ways we respond when life does not unfold as anticipated.
A lifetime of working with people has taught me that understanding ourselves is one thing. Knowing what to do with that internal mishmash of understanding is something else entirely. More often than we might care to admit, we set it aside and get on with life, even when what we understand about ourselves deserves our attention.
In part one "The Work Behind the Work" I share what a lifetime of working with people taught me about myself and human behavior.
After nearly five decades in hairstyling, a career that has also included more than 30 years of nonprofit administration, several business ventures, and years of personal grief work and supporting others through theirs, I have come to recognize a common thread running through nearly everything I have done.
The work has continually revealed the behaviors we humans share, even as each of us remains a unique individual.
What continues to interest me is not simply what people do, but how they understand themselves, respond to circumstances, resist change, and attempt to make sense of experiences that do not fit their expectations.
I have spent much of my life observing the considerable distance that can exist between knowing something and being prepared to act upon that knowledge.
And I have not been exempt from that observation.
In this series of nine articles, I share one continuing conversation about being human.
This collection brings together my personal reflections, professional observations, and research-informed explorations of life as I experienced it. Together, they examine how we often respond to change, how we relate to one another, and how we might discover what it means to participate more deliberately in our own life's awareness.