singularity

what does it mean to be human?

that has been the question living rent-free in me ever since I first used AI for the first time. GPT 3.5. I remember I was in Manhattan, sitting at my software engineering job, less than four years ago, stunned. I distinctly remember telling a coworker: “it’s hard to focus on my work when it feels like it won’t matter in a few years.” for someone who at that point placed his value and worth on what he knew and what he could do, discovering a matrix of numbers that already knew more than I ever could was a catastrophic event. I quit my job within months and moved across the country to San Francisco. I wasn’t quite sure why, but one thing was clear to me: this AI thing was going to change the world, and I wanted to have a say in how it unfolded. oh, and: I was really scared of the changes to come.

in the ensuing years, I barely touched code or AI. instead, I went inwards. I remember tasting inner work for the first time through a weekend workshop called intermediate friendship, a workshop on emotional and relational work. I recall how immediately when I sat down, I felt the impending urge to flee the room, my heart beating like a drum. in the workshop, we made eye contact with strangers, spoke out loud our internal experience moment by moment, shared our securely stashed away insecurities, and more. as the workshop unfolded, I remember how much terror came up. and, how every time I faced my fear instead of running from it, what arose was aliveness, not death. I remember how real it felt, and how that realness felt like releasing a beach ball I’d been desperately holding under water, for as long as I could remember. it felt like taking a breath of fresh mountain air after having lived my entire life immersed in smoke.

attending intermediate friendship was a threshold moment for me. I used to consider myself a rather “rational” person–insofar as I saw myself logically moving through the world. I kept on checking the normal boxes of “success”: graduating college, dating, gainful employment, being surrounded by friends. yet, there was an emptiness that plagued me, a lack at the center of my being that I couldn’t quite escape. intermediate friendship was terrifying, but for once, I wasn’t running away from that lack anymore. I was feeling it.

after intermediate friendship, I continued on my journey of deepening connection to myself and others. I went on meditation retreat. sleepawake. more meditation retreats. I lived in a house in Mt. Shasta with peers, unwinding years of emotional and relational patterns and conditioning that I had living inside, like being trapped in a room of a mansion, and suddenly discovering all the doors and other rooms. as this journey unfolded, I met teacher after teacher, who, perhaps recognizing something of themselves in me, lended me compassion and love I didn’t know I deserved. they held me in the moments I couldn’t hold myself.

I didn’t know what was happening in those years. looking back, I can see I was following a thread. a thread of aliveness. I followed this thread through darkness and light, through depression and euphoria. I’m still following it today. I believe this thread exists in all of us, beckoning us towards our deepest longing for our lives.

following this thread wasn’t comfortable or easeful. often, life felt sisyphean. it felt like two steps forward, three steps back. the part of me that wanted so badly to be able “measure” progress was left dumbfounded. how do you measure what cannot be named? how do you measure the process of recursive deconstruction, of unbecoming? sometimes, I felt like I was the rope being stretched in tug of war. on one side was my patterns and conditioning: my fear, all the ways I had learned it wasn’t acceptable to be in the world. boys don’t cry. if I show how vulnerable I feel, I’ll be hurt. anger is dangerous to express, so I have to hold it in. and, on the other side, the aliveness. the relentless yearning of a soul that was unafraid to shatter in the midst of its becoming.

some days, it was torture. I distinctly remember telling a teacher one day: “it feels like the universe is waterboarding me.” I wasn’t exaggerating: that was the most salient way I could describe my experience in that moment. it felt like my being was being stretched beyond its limits, screeching and screaming along the way.

other days, life was more full and more beautiful than I could have imagined. I felt magic around and in me. I was transformed by relationships that felt greater than me and the other person: they felt orchestrated. like two opposite frequencies being magnetized to each other. like supernovas colliding.

and now, I am here. I can’t describe to you what changed recently, other than to say it felt like a tipping point. I’m still rattled by the cosmic current on the daily, yet less adrift in its machinations. I trust the process more. when I zoom out, I find myself hurtling towards an event horizon. it seems like my only job is to get out of my own way. perhaps, that was always my only job.

I have few words to describe my current state save this: there’s no one, nor anywhere, I’d rather be. and from this place, I find myself returning to the question that started everything. what once induced an existential crisis now reveals an invitation: an invitation to co-create, to share, to simply be.

from this vantage point, I look out and see a world hurtling towards its own event horizon. I feel and see the terror, the joy, the breathless quiet of the unknown. I like to say, “life is a mirror for my great and continuous unfolding.” that statement has never felt more real.

what does it mean to be human?

from where I stand, the answer is shifting every day. perhaps, though, what is changing is only the distortions in the mirror being slowly wiped away. the distortions I see in myself I also see in the world: the addictive trance of consumption and distraction, the belief that I’m in this alone. more and more, I find myself connecting and expressing the longing underneath: for community, creation, and presence.

asking myself in this moment, here’s how I answer: being human means being alive. to live is to be a mote soaring amongst the stars: to stretch, to contract, to belong, to endure, to die.

to be human is to be a part of something greater than ourselves. to meet other beings along the way that touch us in ways small and large, unquantifiable all the same. to be left irrevocably changed by those we love, and to grieve their inevitable departings. to be human is to be awake to the sensations of having a body: tightness in the chest, stomach butterflies, the subtle all-pervasive buzz amidst stillness. and, to be human is to helplessly unaware of what tomorrow brings, and to dare to live fully all the same. to be human is to be life itself.

to those who are afraid for what comes next I say: me too. here’s what I tell myself: listen to your heart. listen to the intelligence that flows through your veins like water flows in rivers towards the ocean. you are the universe experiencing itself. you are the infinite divine in material form, here for a flash. savor this moment as if savoring a timeless evening together with your favorite humans, knowing it could be your last.

the words of Dylan Thomas come to mind, perhaps written at a similar threshold: