Have a Human Experience

I was watching the latest Dave Chappelle stand up special “The Closer” and as a fan of his work I enjoyed the special as expected. There was a part of towards the end which I found to be particularly profound. Dave was talking about a conversation he was having at a show one night with a transgender friend of his named Daphne Dorman. He mentioned about how he didn't understand her and what she said was very moving. She said “I don't need you to understand me. I just need you to believe that I'm having a human experience.”

It is a pretty powerful statement and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to apply to life in general. It can apply to some of the deepest questions such as what is the purpose of life, and why are we here? The answer could be simply, to have a human experience.

We are all here on this planet and we have been given the opportunity to live a lifetime here as a human and experience it however we want. Sure, we are all born into different environments and circumstances to begin with, but ultimately it is up to us how we want to live out lives. We choose what we want to do, where we want to go, how we want to behave, how we want to spend our time, who we want to associate with etc.

Everyone is different and gets to make their own decisions about how they want to live their life. This can help understand people who are different. You might see someone do something or act a certain way and not understand it or not see why they would do that. The same person may see you do something or act a certain way that is different from them and wonder the same thing about you.

It's great to be able to understand people, but its not always necessary when you realize that we are all just living our lives and having a human experience. We are all at different points in our lives and have had different experiences up to this point that have shaped who we are. We have this wonderful opportunity to have this experience so be sure to make the most of it!