The Problem With Being Human

I wrote this near the end of summer and decided to hold onto it until the right moment. It’s about something I’ve circled in other reflections: how being human is never easy, but there is always something beautiful to be found.

This weekend we are at the lake house with our Fuck It Bucket friends (https://becomingreal.substack.com/p/the-fuck-it-bucket). They come every year after the summer season ends. They are not guests; they are family. Together we close up shop, put away inflatables, winterize the dock, and clear out the kitchen. The weekend is not designed to be fun, but somehow it always is.

If you’ve been here for a while, you may be surprised to hear that I did not start my day with a run. I try to give myself at least one day a week to sleep in, to remind running that I can live without her if I need to. I woke up on my own rhythm, which is both difficult for me and a needed break from my sometimes punishing routine.

When I checked my phone, I saw a text from my friend: “I’m up and changing if you want to walk?” She was already out the door when I opened my eyes, but I threw on sneakers and went to meet her. We rarely get time just the two of us, and I was not about to miss my chance.

This friend does not live in my state, but we manage to see each other several times a year. Our time together is precious. She is one of the fiercest friends I know. As we walked, we caught up on our oldest kids, both newly launched to college. We talked about our marriages, our younger kids, our jobs. The usual, really. But the longer we walked, the more our conversation widened to the worlds beyond our families. After more than a decade of friendship, we know each other’s inner circles, even the friends we have never met.

She shared stories of her people. One whose husband is dying of cancer, about to leave behind two children. Another whose marriage collapsed after the death of their last baby. As she spoke, I listened closely. I felt the pain of women and men I have never met, filtered through the voice of my dear friend.

What I thought, and what I think so often, is this: being human is so hard. Even under the best of circumstances, hard eventually finds us all.

I see it every day in my patients. My work is to sit with people in pain, to listen as they tell the truth of what life has given them and what it has demanded from them. I am moved by what each one of us faces in this messy and unpredictable world.

And of course, I have known my own pain and seen it come for the people I love. I have lived through the loss of my beloved sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and three young nephews, the sudden death of my husband’s best friend in his mid-forties, and the four separate drug-related deaths of peers my 19-year-old son has had to face.

You might think that witnessing all this pain would make me brittle. But it does the opposite. It makes me tender. I do not compare one loss to another. Pain is pain, and it doesn’t help to measure one against the next. Still, I know some people are handed more than their share. Some must work much harder than others to find joy.

What moves me most is not the suffering itself, but the resilience I see again and again. The woman losing her husband who still shows up to cheer her son at every college game. The student thriving at university after being raised by a parent too ill to provide support. The young woman who lost her mother early and now opens her heart to others who carry the same grief. My mother-in-law, who lost her daughter and three of her grandchildren and still chooses, every single day, to channel her love into the family in front of her.

As my friend and I walked, I thought about how pain threads through every life, and yet so does love. We share our stories, and in that simple act the weight of the hurt can shift. It doesn’t disappear, but it becomes more bearable. That connection allows us to let in joy, even in the face of suffering. Resilience lives not only in thriving against the odds, but in the walking together when the road feels long, in the steady showing up for one another again and again.

The problem with being human is that we cannot escape pain. The gift of being human is that we keep showing up, step after step, and we keep loving anyway.

By the end of the weekend, the dock is empty, the fridge cleared, the house quiet. We say our goodbyes and drive away, knowing it will be another year before we gather here again. Closing the lake house always carries a pinch of sorrow and a trace of joy.

I think that is how life works too. We live beside both loss and love, endings and beginnings. We carry the pain and the sweetness together.

Perhaps being human is not a problem after all.