HEATHER HOPES: How to Be A Human

By HEATHER C. COX
Staff Writer
reporter@sbnewspaper.com 

Heather Cathleen Cox

In a time crunch, I rolled up to the drive thru at a fast food chain. You know the drill. I waited behind three or four vehicles until it was my turn to order. I rolled down my window. “Hi. Could I have an un-sweet tea with lemon, please?”

“That’s one sweet tea? Will that complete your order?” asked a faceless, monotone voice from the other side of the box.

Sigh. “UN-sweet, tea,” I said, emphasizing the un- but including “please,” so as not to appear fussy.

“Un-sweet tea. Will that complete the order?” the voice asked again. I said yes and continued the process of moving forward, all the while considering everything I needed to do on my hour-long lunch break. I turned up the dial on my car radio (I would say “knob,” but the knob actually broke off a few months back, so it’s really just a dial) and proceeded to hit every preset button in a sincere effort to find something brilliant.

At the first window, I paid and smiled routinely, still waiting. At the second window, somewhere in between singing along to a country song and collecting my icy bevvie, the smiling guy who handed me the drink asked a familiar question: “Would you like catsup with that?”

I looked him quizzically in the eyes as our hands exchanged the drink, and in an instant, we both realized it. It caused us both to break character. Two human beings operating on autopilot had just collided.

It’s as if a numbing fog lifted, and new senses were unmasked. There I was, going through the motions of life, and then it hit me. I knew where and who I was, sure. But I also realized I had been coasting on autopilot rather than consciously and attentively selecting my actions. Maybe it sounds ridiculous, but I went from thinking of the people at the restaurant as “workers” to “real people.”

I could tell the man who handed me the drink had also been plucked from his autopilot state when a look spread across his face, like he was realizing I was a real person too. The autopilot feature in which he had been operating caused him to ask a silly question – catsup isn’t exactly the condiment of choice for a glass of iced tea, but for the majority of customers, that default question isn’t enough to snap him out of autopilot.

In other words, it takes something unusual to prompt us from autopilot.

Once I stopped functioning in autopilot and began to consciously pick my choices. The first choice I made was to laugh at this silliness. I chose to offer a genuine smile, the kind that takes a minute to formulate. I didn’t think about checking whether the iced tea was sweet. In fact, it’s just now occurring to me that I didn’t even get my lemon wedge. Because I was no longer focused on the task of buying a tea, I could focus on the goal of knowing my actions.

My actions don’t necessarily equal my reality, nor do your actions equal yours. Reality wasn’t just, “I’m buying a glass of tea.” It was, “I’m a human being, operating a vehicle, living underneath the big hot sun, taking in hundreds of sensations all at the same time. And as a result, I drove away from that fast food place wondering what else I miss out on when I live life on autopilot.

When we set our inner dialogue to cruise control, beyond the obvious – like the birds flying overhead, sunrises and sunsets; the little glances or words with a stranger that could change our perspective; the enrichment of souls that only transpires when a person is connecting with themselves, since we must connect with ourselves before we can even begin to know someone else – we are at risk of missing the very core of humanity.

We aren’t work mules. If we become task-oriented rather than goal-oriented and continue piling stuff on our shoulders, we will reach a breaking point. In the interim, if we don’t put true emotion behind our actions, the likelihood of ever finding fulfillment in our daily routine is low.

Choosing to live in autopilot will temporarily allow us to shut out real and raw moments with which we don’t immediately want to deal. But one day, something will come along to snap us back into reality, and in that moment, we’ll be faced with the face in the mirror. What’s scary is if we truly reap what we sow and we don’t sow goodness into the lives of the despondent, when we hit bottom, we will remain as helpless as we have allowed others to be.

There is no prestige, no glory, no excellence or anything praiseworthy about trudging through life like a robot. God says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. In other words, we are designed of our Creator with a certain fear and wonderment embedded into our genetics. We are not supposed to be okay with injustice, depravity, impoverishment, criminal behavior and utter disregard of our surroundings.

We are not supposed to be okay just “going through the motions” of life. Moreover, pretending not to notice reality won’t help us obtain our own dreams any sooner. Psalm 68:19 says, “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.” This speaks so richly to me, friends. It’s telling us that the Lord will daily make our junk His problem. Why would He do this if not to free us for important stuff, like being present in our daily lives?

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We should not shirk our duty to humanity onto someone else’s shoulders because we are comfortable remaining numb.

The Bible speaks to people who cannot be bothered to help humankind. Psalm 109:15-16 says, “May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. For they never thought of doing a kindness, but hounded to death the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted.” Verse 17 of the same passage says, “They loved to pronounce a curse – may it come on them; they found no pleasure in blessing – may it be far from them.”

Comparatively, the measure we use to help others will be returned to us, so if we bless others, the Lord promises a reward. Proverbs 11:25 says, “A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”

Ultimately, we can remain numb enough to allow the realities of our fellow human to roll past us, like we roll through the drive thru window. We can continue taking just what we want and minding our own business, or we can boldly stand and do our part to help those with whom we share a planet.

Read this story in the September 30 edition of the San Benito News, or subscribe to our E-Edition by clicking here.