[leerock89]

What does it mean to be human?? After living for 25 years I thought I knew the answer to this question, at least to a comfortable degree, but one event changed that outlook. I don't really want to go into to much details about how it happened, only that it left me with a feeling of an understanding of what it truly meant to be human, to live, to breath, to think, feel, see, communicate, multiply and ultimately die. With an abstract, almost 2 dimensional look at what it meant to be human, my eyes were opened to that fact of what I am and what I am doing. The startling realization that I was alive and human actually hit me like a ton of bricks. What the fuck am I doing to myself?? Am I where I want to be, doing what I want to do?? Is what I am doing really called living?? Why is it that I have to think of these things?? The answer to these questions came unto me like an epiphany, the simplicity of it had me on my knees and the ensuing ecstasy of finally beginning to understand had me in tears. I am alive and human because I am alive and human. It was one of those crazy Taoist spiritual mumbo jumbo that came real. Even though it may seem simple to know and something that I had thought about and talked about on many occasions, comprehension of what it meant to be alive didn't occur until that moment and my eyes were opened to the world. Now I live to be alive, I want to feel that feeling of being human, not stuck in some limbo where all I'm doing is working, playing games and going out, but really living, experiencing everything this puny world has to offer and then go look for some more. Life is to short to just spend away only thinking or only acting or just being comfortable. As a human we should challenge our selves every day, look for something different every moment, feel every single range of emotion that we can feel for it is the only way we can be honest and true to ourselves. Long life and prosperity.

What I want to ask the members of The Mentality Symposium is this; What do you think it means to be human? What do you think it means to be alive and why??