What makes a human being into a person?

Person: a human being regarded as an individual.

Are human beings really individuals? Or are we simply blind to the harsh realities of the human race?

There comes a point it one’s life when the seeds of doubt begin to germinate. For some, this comes with the hormonal bombardment of adolescence, for others the dreaded mid-life crisis. For some people, it is only in the closing hours of life that the creeping shades of contemplation cast a shadow over the already worn pavement of life. This is the point at which you realise that your life has become a groundhog day (referring to the film, not the 2nd February.) It seems that we all reach a point where we essentially live the same day, week or month over and over and over again, with only negligible differences. You take the same bus to work, you use the same elevator, you meaninglessly greet the same people and you sit at the same desk every day. Sure, you may choose a mocha one day and a latte the next, and you may even walk once in a while but essentially you have entered the infinite loop of human existence.

We humans live in routines, we abide by the same protocols and precedents every day. We do not vary our daily activities because doing so would throw us into the unknown, an unknown where we do not control all of the variables. In this sense we are no different from any other species at all. Once we find a routine that suits us, we abide by it, we gain security from it and eventually it becomes part of who we are. We therefore are no longer our own people, but our routines’ people. We are not defined by who we are, but what we do. It seems that being individual is no longer part of the human mind-set. Individuality cannot breed familiarity, and without familiarity we seem to be unable to gain security. And humans thrive on security. Why plunge into the dangers of unknown when we can live a looped-life in which we know that there will be no perilous dangers waiting around the corner?

It takes a special type of person (and i believe they are true people) to do something about this. Most of us simply revel in our routine. We try to improve our lives slightly by taking that overtime and paying for an extra holiday, or cutting out the mocha and slimming down. By doing this we convince ourselves that we have broken the monotony and we therefore convince ourselves (perhaps subliminally) that we are our own masters.

Yet in doing this, we simply join another majority. Because we have done what every other person would do, we have shown that we are part of the loop. We conform to the human psyche and in doing so, simply prove that we are incapable of being individual. If we are not individual then are we really people? Can we truly class ourselves as “people” if we essentially live by the same principles of apes? Stay safe, look after ourselves, make ourselves comfortable.

Only when we leave our comfort zones can we appreciate what it is to be a real person. When we visit the other side of the world and help those who are truly in need, when we complete the impossible, when we overcome the overwhelming. It is in the strangest places that we find true human nature. Often it is where people have nothing and no opportunity to establish routine that it becomes clear what it is to be a person. For example, recently I took a trip to Kenya. Some of the locals there live in absolute poverty, yet their passion and willingness to live is unparalleled by anything I have ever encountered. In the face of sheer adversity these people forge a life in which there are no certainties, in which every day is a blessing and every meal could well be their last. Yet their appreciation for life, and for each other, shows that regardless of our environment we all have the ability to be great.

So can we really ever break the loop? Those within the loop often want to break it. Yet those outside of the loop pray that they could be in it. Alas we reach the epitome of the human thought process – The grass is always greener on the other side.