“Partnership with a good dog has millions of advantages over partnership with even the best human being.”
—Bride and Groom, Susan Conant

What would you write, given ten minutes with this prompt?

Below is my take, and then some reflections.
Thanks to friend Joan for choosing the prompt, and for hosting Sara and me for another Mallon Writers session the other evening. We’re coming up on a year as a group, and I am so grateful for these women.

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Humans.

We are remarkable–remarkably creative, resourceful, intelligent, and SHITTY.
We are wired to connect; we crave it, require it. And yet we are terrible at it too often.

How can we reconcile this paradox?
Every day we can find myriad examples of both the immense kindness and altruism, and also the most unspeakably heinous violence and destruction–all visited by us on ourselves.

FASCINATING.

What determines our behavior?

Do we each believe ourselves capable of the highest and lowest that humans can do? I do.

I believe that under certain circumstances, any given person has the potential to behave in any given way. To me, this is the most realistic and humble way to approach human nature. We think we know so much; and yet the vast majority of our behaviors and relationships are driven by how we feel. And we are largely, I think willfully, blind to this reality. Most of us live our lives far from the extremes of human altruism and violence, but I think it’s our denial of the potential of both within all/each of us that facilitates the expression of the worst by some of us.

How would the world operate if we were just a lot (or even a little) more honest about our shadows? About our light?

How interesting that the best and worst of both aspects of our nature are so unsafe to share, to remotely acknowledge the possible existence of?

Humans. We are complex, emotional beings who delude ourselves into thinking we are rational, and we oversimplify to avoid discomfort.

Oh well, it is what it is; we are what we are. Amazing–and maybe not?–that we have survived as long as we have.

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Altruistic and malevolent.
Collective and individualistic.
Fit in and stand out.
Masculine and feminine.

Readers of this blog know how I embrace and relish a good, integrative paradox. The older I get the more deeply I appreciate complexity, nuance, and the importance of context and circumstance. My mounting enthusiasm for it all seems to fly counter to prevailing cultural winds wherein overgeneralization, oversimplification, and refusal to recognize, let alone tolerate or engage with complexity seem to stymie our leaders and systems with alarmingly powerful force.

Where are the leaders who can not only dance gracefully with complexity, but also lead us by example doing it?

Some days I can’t decide if I’m a cynic or an optimist. I know I’m both, and I lean net optimist. I think we are all both; thankfully we don’t all lean cynic for too long at the same time. We all hold the tension within ourselves, swayed one way or another at any given time by myriad simultaneous variables. It is what it is; we are what we are. We have survived for thousands of years and yet, thousands–even hundreds–more are not guaranteed by any means. It all depends on how we–individually and collectively–decide to treat one another and our planet, both today and forever.

So, we shall see. Anything can happen.