Humans Becoming

Earlier this month I had the privilege of participating in a conference at Cal Poly Pomona. It was offered through the Ahimsa Center and the topic was The Transformational Power of Education: Lessons from Ghandi, King, Chavez and Mandela.

Earlier this month I had the privilege of participating in a conference at Cal Poly Pomona. It was offered through the Ahimsa Center and the topic was The Transformational Power of Education: Lessons from Ghandi, King, Chavez and Mandela. Needless to say it was deep. The content was both thought provoking and inspiring. But my biggest takeaway came from a funny aside that a psychology professor, Dr. Vinod Kool, shared. As he was describing his scientific model to support psychology practitioners seeking to end violence (imagine that!), he explained how difficult and confusing the concept was (agreed), and how we wrestle with concepts because we are constantly changing and learning. And then he paused and said: Why are we called human beings anyway? That seems so static! We should be called HUMAN BECOMINGS! And so we all jokingly became human becomings for the rest of the conference. I love the idea of a human becoming. It seems so mysterious and action-oriented, so generous and hopeful. In fact, what if you started your day planning to be the best human BECOMING you could be? What would you do differently than just BEING? Would you take a risk? Learn something new? Forgive yourself for a mistake? Start something over? Make a lofty plan for the future? Likely most of us won’t be spending our days making elaborate scientific models for non-violence like Professor Kool, but I bet if we put some energy behind it, we could make him proud of who we “become”! Love, Molly