This week, I came across a three-minute video clip of a graduation speech by a freshly graduated student, maybe from a university in the West, while browsing social media. While there was a lot to take away from her passionate speech, one message struck me a lot. Her point was that we at a graduation ceremony are usually asked, “what do you want to be?” instead of “who do you want to be?” In simple words, she in her speech raised a question, “What does it mean to be a human being instead of a human doing?” It’s a powerful question and needs serious reflection, I think.
To make a better sense of the point that the graduate student raised, let’s put things in perspective. We have created a society around us that believes more in human doing instead of being a human being. We approach one other through our human doings, through our labels. Our labels usually define the strength of bonds we can develop with one another. If a person is wearing a socially constructed esteemed label, our tone of conversation changes; our way of behaviour changes and we start extending courtesies in line with the prestige of the label we are face-to-face with. On the other hand, if the label the other person is wearing is not in line with the label we wear, our tone, our demeanour and our exchange of courtesies adapt to the label we are dealing with.
Approaching one another and valuing one another through labels is the norm of today’s world and tragically that has made our human interactions quite shallow in nature. Our interactions in this label-driven world is more like a business, nothing else. We approach one another with a transactional approach, and that’s why we hardly connect. We interact but we don’t interact. We live with one another but we don’t live with one another. In this label-driven world, it’s not we who live with one another but it’s our egoistic selves that live with one another. Because we define and value one another with our doing part, that has created an epidemic of disconnect among us and has robbed us of core human values that makes us human beings.
What makes us human beings is not what we do but rather it’s a set of values that we carry. Those values comprise empathy, care, love, respect, integrity, compassion, kindness, perseverance, resilience, trust, selflessness, commitment, and other regarding behaviour. Our human worth is defined by how we treat others, which attitude we adopt in the face of adversity and how we appreciate others for the beauty they carry within themselves.
If our human doing or label which we are pursuing is coming at the cost of our human being, I think we are paying a very heavy price for our label. We need to be reflective over our pursuit of human doings and think deeply about what kind of person we are becoming in pursuit of this particular human doing. If we align our pursuit of human doing with the pursuit of being a human being, we through our labels can do miracles and can connect with one another in phenomenal ways.
Unfortunately, we have created a system around us that is more focused on the pursuit of human doing instead of pursuit of being a human being. Academic spaces in an ideal sense should contribute to both human doing and human being; however, in reality academic spaces seem more focused on selling human doing aspects, in other words, labels than human being aspects. Universities are coming up with a variety of new programmes, disciplines and optics to attract young minds for the pursuit of various human doings or labels; however, to what extent efforts are invested in the inculcation of human values, that’s a moot point. In academic spaces, students and faculty are evaluated for what they do instead of what they are becoming and that’s a clear indication of how the whole system is focused on the pursuit of human doing instead of being a human being.
Since the world around us is speaking the language of human doing or labels, there is no harm in pursuing human doing as a good human doing or a label can provide you means to live a quality lifestyle. However, in pursuit of a human doing or label, let’s not be blind to what makes us a human being.
If our human doing or label which we are pursuing is coming at the cost of our human being, I think we are paying a very heavy price for our label. We need to be reflective over our pursuit of human doings and think deeply about what kind of person we aRE becoming in pursuit of this particular human doing. If we align our pursuit of human doing with the pursuit of being a human being, we through our labels can do miracles and can connect with one another in phenomenal ways.
