Fully Human

This is a phrase that Jacob Bronowski used often in his writing on science and the arts. It always intrigued me because "human" as a species designation didn't probe or expand that word deeply enough for me. When we ask what the fullness of the human condition might be, it's hard to know whether this is a consequence of the brain, of our curiosity and striving, of our longing for transcendance, of our capacity for hope or out capacity for self-delusion.

Maybe this has always been a difficult problem to solve, but it is certainly that kind of problem in the contemporary world. Who helps lead us to an answer or even to the need to ask the question? I believe the schools have failed us, especially the university-factories. Religion has failed us, cowering in their "one-trueness" instead of living out their common core messages. Our leaders have failed us with little courage and imagination.

Have we failed ourselves as well? No one escapes the events of life that inevitably can discourage, poison, darken and even destroy us. But these are precisely the events that require the courage and faith that take us beyond ourselves. And that to me is where the fullness of being human lies. Truly, we are only "fully human" to the degree that all of us are.