It’s February and what we odd humans consider the month of love. And despite our weirdnesses as a species, I just love humans so much.

Grief and Grandeur

Long ago, I formulated something I call The Grief and The Grandeur to describe humans (I am still working on a long article to talk about this in detail), a recognition that we are such an incredible combination of awful, horrible, destructiveness and hatred, and wonderful, amazing, creativeness and love. All together, wrapped into one package, each aspect existing at the same time. Within every single one of us. Sometimes, one of these will take precedent, as we’ve seen throughout history; ebbs and flows of Grief and Grandeur in action.

Today, I want to honor the Grandeur side and my ultimate love for our insanely complicated species.

Creativity

That we know of, we seem to be the only species on this planet that creates with purpose, with the intent to explore and bring forth deeper meaning. So, humans do that. And we’ve come up with so many ways to do so. Visual, auditory, verbal, kinesthetic, etc (ie; painting, music, writing, dance, etc) are just some of the categories that we create in. We open doors to our deeper selves, to the better understanding of those things we do not understand, both within and without. And those portals not only allow our individual selves through, but also other humans, and ultimately supports the creativity and depth of the entire species.

What’s not to love about that, if not even for the sole enjoyment of the creative product itself? I love that we have this unique gift! We are vastly improved by having this ability. Hell, we may not even have survived as a sapient, civilized species without it! I love that we are able to find ways into beauty and ugliness, light and shadow, love and hate, good and evil; exploration of all of those things presented through the making of meaning, which we humans cannot seem to avoid. In fact, our very psychologies depend upon intact meaning and we strive against meaninglessness at all costs. So, we create and explore and move deeply.

Innovation

Because we are purposely creating creatures and we have this cool thing called a neocortex that allows us complicated, higher-ordered thinking, we are a species with the ability to innovate. From the time of the arising of sapience, we have been coming up with ideas, building inventions, always creating new methods and technologies to do so many things in life. Moving and progressing us forward in so many different realms of life. Yes, admittedly sometimes to our detriment (but that’s The Grief side, that we aren’t discussing today!). But more often, frequently to our own awe and amazement, to our benefit and advancement as a species. We have, and continue to, improved continuously in the areas of math, science, medicine, communication, space, energy, transportation, computing, entertainment, creativity, psychology, philosophy, and so many more.

I am in awe of what we can conceive and create in this realm! I love that we are able to dream up new ideas. That alone would be incredible, but then that we can bring those ideas to fruition? That is beyond astounding. I love how we continue to imagine and act beyond our current knowledge and technology, always moving, always improving, always reaching.

Multi-Passionate

While we tend towards upholding specialization as the pinnacle of learning, knowledge, innovation, and purpose, that wasn’t always the case. At some point in history, possibly before industrialization and the space races, generalization and breadth of knowledge was considered important. And while specialization may be the ideal now, I am of the opinion that actually, humans are far more multi-passionate than we think. We need the ability to have many interests in order to engage our creativity and innovation.

Since I am a multipod (someone who has many interests at once), naturally I love this quality and potential in humans. There is so much to love about all the interests and passions we can engage. And wow, so hard to choose amongst them. I wish I could know and love all of them. But with all the humans in the world, we’ve got them covered. And with that, we can do anything.

Spirituality

Not only can we do anything, we can be everything. Another unique quality of humans, we can see the Infinite if we look. And since we are Spirit, but often have forgotten this, we find ways to Remember. This could be through our creativity (usually the case), our innovations, our passions, or even our natural, innate desires to Know, to Be. We belong to each other and the Universe, and just innately without any special equipment. But we created such practices as religion, yoga, meditation, mindfulness to help us access all that which is Beyond inside of us. Because we forget.

But, what can I say here? I love this super special quality of humans, the ability to access that which is already there, Spirit, the Infinite, the Divine. That which we are already a part of. And this ultimately includes Love as well. Not just my love for humans but that we can experience Love at its depth, internally and externally, for each other and everything.

Capacity for Growth

All of these previous categories lead us to this, the capacity for growth as individuals and as a species. These are why we keep evolving, why we are becoming more deeply complex beings. Why we will eventually be something beyond amazing. Sure, we’ll have our downs (again, that’s for a different article) but our ups will just keep getting better and better. Our evolution will take us places only we can dream up in our wildest fantasies, setting it all down in art and ideas and passion.

And this is my ultimate love for humans, this capacity, this possibility and potential existing within each human. When we tap into the love of The Grandeur in the human being, this is that love. There is no higher pinnacle. Possibilities, potential, the future in play in the present moment.

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I finish up this article as Perseverance, NASA’s newest rover, is landing successfully on Mars. Tears are running down my face and I am cheering along with JPL Mission Control, and my love for humans is never more strong than in these moments. I love that rover, I love humans, and I love you.