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The Art of Being Fully Human
Leo Buscaglia

Bending
tom walsh

Turning Point
Bernie Siegel

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What I'm going to be talking to you about tonight is a subject that is really dear to my heart, and that is the art--literally, the art of being fully human.  I don't know about you, but I really love the concept that I am a human being and have all the potential to be a human being.

I remember being terribly moved by something that I read in a book of Haim Ginott's.  It's a very poignant thing and it's written by a school principal who gave this to Ginott.  She said:

"I am a survivor of a concentration camp.  My eyes saw what no person should witness.  Gas chambers built by learned engineers.  Children poisoned by educated physicians.  Infants killed by trained nurses.  Women and children shot and killed by high school and college graduates.  So I'm suspicious of education.  My request is:  help your students to be human.  Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, or educated Eichmanns.  Reading and writing and spelling and history and arithmetic are only important if they serve to make our students human."

You know what occurred to me?  We teach everything in the world to people, except the most essential thing.  And that is life.  Nobody teaches you about life.  You're supposed to know about it.  Nobody teaches you how to be a human being and what it means to be a human being, and the dignity that it means when you say, "I am a human being."  Everyone assumes this is something you have, or you should have gotten by osmosis.  Well, it's not working by osmosis!

It's very difficult to define, because it's such an enormously broad concept.  The more I live in joy and beauty, the greater a lover I become.  Every day, I'm becoming a greater and greater lover.  And to define it would be to limit it.  But at least along the way I kind of have an idea of where I am.  But I also know that if I put my hand out, you could give me new definitions, new strokes, new ideas, and together we could grow.

There are maybe two thousand people here tonight.  There isn't one person who hasn't known loneliness.  Isn't that wonderful?  There isn't one person who hasn't known despair.  Isn't that wonderful?  There isn't one person who hasn't cried.  But also, there aren't many who haven't laughed, who haven't known joy.  And in all those ways, we can communicate.  We're alike, because I've known it, too, and we're all involved in the same struggle:  to become fully human--which is the best thing we can become.  And what a goal!  What a wonderful goal.

To me, probably the most exciting thing in the world is the realization that I have the potential of being fully human.  I can't be a God, but I can be a fully functioning human being!  And what I'd like to do is talk to you about some of the things that I think are essential in order to become a fully functioning human being.

We must get back to the point again; and, this is going to shock a lot of people, and you're not going to like it, but I'm going to risk it.  I feel this very strongly.  We've got to risk again by saying that "I like me."  You cannot give to anyone in this world what you do not have.  And therefore you must concentrate on getting.  You must become the most beautiful, sensitive, wondrous, magical, unique, fantastic person in the world to be able to have all of these things in order to give them away and share them.  Think about it.  If I don't have wisdom I can only teach you my ignorance.  If I don't have joy I can only teach you despair.  If I don't have freedom I can only put you in cages.  But everything I have I can give away.  That's the only reason for having it.  But I've got to have it first.  And so I dedicate myself to becoming the best Leo the world has ever known.

Being the best Leo, I can love you as the best you.  I will not have anybody playing "follow me."  Because when you start following my way, it will lead you to me and you will get lost.  The only way to follow is your way.  You're that magic combination that will never be again, and I don't care who you are, how exalted you feel or how lonely you feel.  Every one of you is something unique and special.  I wish we could tell this to children early so it wouldn't take them a lifetime to find out!  You have a unique world to share.

People who have studied perception and sensation know that everyone sees the world in a different way.  Yet, it's the same world.  We don't observe a tree in the same way.  Yet it's the same tree.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could share that tree and see it in two different ways?  Just the concept sends me into orbit.  And yet I hear people constantly saying, "What have I to offer?"  You know what you have to offer?  A central piece of the jigsaw puzzle.  Unless you assume the responsibility, that picture never will be completed.  I'll never see your tree and I'm convinced that we still have misery, despair, agony, all of those things, because people didn't actualize themselves and share their worlds.  Because if they had, our picture would have been clearer.  You have something to paint on that tapestry that's uniquely yours.  Don't miss the opportunity.  You are wondrous.  You are magical.  There is only one you.

The next time you pass a mirror, look in an say, "My goodness.  You know, it's true!  There's only one of me!"  Oh, if we could get into that!  And the wonderful thing is, too, that it doesn't matter where we are in that "you."  You're only just beginning, because do you know that no one has ever been able to find a limit to human potential, or to humanness?  You are unlimited possibilities.
    

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Bending

We're all going through days--weeks and months, actually--of turmoil right now.  We're all faced with pretty drastic effects of the world's awful economic situation, even if the direct effects aren't hitting us or our families directly.  Many, many people have lost their jobs and livelihoods, and many more face the imminent loss of their work.  People are having to make ends meet with less money, and they're having to cut back on virtually all that they do--even cutting back on all that they have been doing for their children.

And as we cut back, we're providing fewer resources for the people who work in service jobs, the waitresses and waiters and the employees at the retail shops and the other places where we aren't spending nearly as much as we used to.  And as their resources dwindle, they're forced to make hard decisions, cutting jobs and hours to their employees, who now face their own hardships in their lives.

There really is no way to escape the reality--we're all facing tough times.  Now, the recession is supposed to be turning this year and our "recovery" is supposed to begin, but what does that really mean?  It most certainly doesn't mean that people immediately are going to get their jobs back, and we'll all live happily ever after.  It doesn't mean that our problems are over with our bank accounts and our mortgages and the houses we've lost.  It may mean that there's hope in our future, but we still have to work our way towards the future, don't we?

So what do we do in these times?  Do we give in to despair and lose our hope?  Or do we adopt a fierce opposition to what's going on, steeling ourselves like a brick wall against the forces that threaten us, vowing not to give in at all, no matter what?  Or perhaps we can just act as if nothing is happening, and it will go away all by itself.

Personally, I prefer to do as the tree does--it bends in the fierce winds, but it doesn't allow itself to be knocked down.  Yes, eventually all trees fall, but all of the large trees that we see in the world have endured more than their share of stormy times, and by giving in to the winds--but only to a certain extent--it allows itself to survive until the calm and sunny days return.

We do have to bend these days.  We have to spend less, but not pull our contributions completely out of our local economies.  We may have to turn down our thermostats and use less hot water and less electricity, without depriving ourselves so much that we show that we've lost all our faith in life and in our God, whatever we conceive God to be.  As we read about the people who are suffering dearly these days, we have to feel compassion for them and pray for them, perhaps even contributing something to local food banks and shelters, but we have to go on living our lives, knowing that the calm and sunny days will come again.

I don't want to sound as if I'm trivializing what's going on, but it seems that life is sending us a very strong message these days--it's time to re-prioritize and to re-evaluate our lives.  It's time to look at the things that have come to be important to us and ask ourselves if those things truly are important.  If we get laid off, it's time to look at other options and other possibilities for earning a living.  During times like these, many people are pushed into completely new careers, and they often find themselves doing work that they love much more than the work they were doing before.

I believe that times like these also can start us to thinking about the causes of the times themselves--the extravagant spending, the corporate greed in an atmosphere of almost no regulation, the abuses of our planet and our resources that have caused us to walk too far out onto the thin ice.  The ice held us up for a while, but we really were just lucky that this recession didn't hit sooner and harder.

And as we bend as trees bend, it's also important that we take care of ourselves and try to protect ourselves from such winds in the future.  It's important that we take steps that may build walls that can shelter us from such tempests, though not walls that are so high that they keep out life.  It's important that we perform some sort of self-evaluation that can help us to see if we, ourselves, have caused part of the problems that we now encounter.  In a recession, perhaps our own spending habits have been part of our problem, and there should be things that we can change if we want things to get better.

Almost nobody gets through times like these unscathed.  Even those who get through well will lose a few branches and many leaves.  Friends and families will be hurt deeply during such days, and we must endure their pain and suffering as well as our own sorrows.  But let us use these days to teach us.  Let us learn from the opportunities for learning that are so incredibly abundant right now, even if some of the lessons may be painful.  For no matter how painful those lessons may be, we can be sure that life is giving us just the lessons we need, even if we can't see the reasons behind them just now.

(By the way, please don't feel that these are empty words.  I very recently received my RIF papers from the school where I teach, so my family and I also will have to do our share of bending in the weeks and months to come!  And even though this is the case, I still firmly believe in the ideas behind these words.)

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