Fighting The Human Condition Within and Without
Fighting The Human Condition Within and Without
When I was a kid my older brother and I used to have really brutal fist fights. We just used to get under each other’s skin so badly that we could’ve killed each other. The situation would reach such a boiling point that physical aggression was the only way out. The event of us fighting would traumatize our whole family, including ourselves.
It is such a good example for me of the human condition at work from a young age. By the end our fist-fights (where we literally be punching each other in the face as hard as we could) we would each be crying due to the emotional trauma we both suffered. I would be overwhelmed with a tidal wave of conflicting emotions – talk about the human condition all right!! The more easily explainable emotions I would feel were furious anger, resentment, betrayal, deep frustration. But there was an enormous undercurrent of other feelings going on that were more confusing and in some ways more hurtful to me than just anger etc.
The human condition is the disastrous situation of being unable to reconcile or explain the divisiveness inside yourself and as result you spend the rest of your life running away from anything that will put you even remotely near this dilemma. If I think back now about these incidents with my brother I think what really ‘knocked me out’ was the unanswerable questions about myself that hurt me the most. How could I be such a monster to my brother whom I loved? Where did that murderous aggression come from and is that what I’m really like inside?
It was more these type of questions that would dog me as I stumbled through the streets shuddering with tears, trying to calm myself down and figure out what to do next. The human condition is such a crippling mental condition that it has preoccupied humanity for the last two million years!! Obviously I didn’t know that at the time but it sure is nice to have some macro context about our lives now. These fights that we’d have would affect the whole family because after our Dad would inevitably break us apart my brother would go running out of the house one side, me the other, my sister would be sobbing and hugging Mum because she was absolutely traumatized by the whole event. Mum and Dad would have these looks of mild horror and resolve on their faces which always seemed to send me even further down the track of anger and confusion. Of course they couldn’t really say anything but I guess I wanted them to say to me something like: ‘Fighting is okay, we’re all crazy underneath and this life is mad and confusing, and we’re also mad and we know what you’re feeling and thinking but here, let’s sit down on the step here, have some cordial and let us tell you an amazing story about humanity and how you’re a part of this amazing story and so are we and you want to know the best part? This story has the most incredibly fantastically good ending you could ever dream of!! Come sit closer little fella. It starts like this…..’
Take a look at this website, and this article here about the human condition. A biologist called Jeremy Griffith, finally seems to me to give an explanation that makes sense of why I hated and loved my brother so much and why growing up is so difficult.
By publishing this post, I received compensation as a member of Moms With Voices Media. Regardless, this post and all opinions are my own.
