To Be Human Again

Two realities drive our world today — the natural reality and the virtual reality.

There are two categories of people you come across in your world:

• People who make you forget your phone
• People who don’t see the difference between you and their phones.

At the end of this article, I will do a small listing of the quality of people you should have within your circle. But for now, let’s talk about the impact of virtual reality on our humanity.

Have you observed that it’s impossible to get to the bottom end of contents on social media? Take your Instagram for instance, you keep scrolling without an actual endpoint. The same goes for X (formerly named Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and every other one in our world today. When a story breaks, different hawkers are waiting to pounce. They stretch and stretch. They keep recycling just to keep the fireplace warm.

It is on social media that a wedding can last for two weeks. You find yourself viewing the same picture a hundred times from separate sources. You take it down from Instagram and bring it closer to home on WhatsApp. Videos with no business trending are everywhere and that’s because there are enough hands to spread them.

While many people have successfully turned social media into a sustainable business, the truth from the outer view remains that life on the internet has become a new way to live.

We live in a world of virtual reality.

We have become so disconnected from ourselves. We have allowed digital reality to retain more power over our natural reality. We keep failing to commit to ourselves by the day. We have exchanged self-development for social media improvement. Ever present online, but never present to yourself offline.

This is why there is an increase in the number of people who are skilled with Snapchat usage, yet have little to zero computer skills.

This is why people can flip through their phones for hours but can find it difficult to hold meaningful, substantial conversations for a minute.

Lots of people who claim to love their own companies are on this table; it is a flimsy excuse to cover up the terrible damage that technology has done to their human nature.

Sometimes, I try to engage some people in thoughtful conversations, willing to share ideas with them, and while I am trying to get them locked in, they are busy fiddling with their phones and nodding heads as a way to show their pretentious attention. It’s sad but it’s just the way we are now.

You hear people say once they notice your social media activity, they just assume you are in a fine state. A guy I challenged for not reaching out for about eight months told me this in response to my query. Our brief conversation went like this:

Me: I’ve not heard from you since we departed that early morning. How have you been?

Him: I am fine sir. I only check through your status.

This is who we have become. This is how disconnected we have become from ourselves. This is our sad reality. We are beginning to place unimportant value on true connection. Emotional intelligence is disappearing at a rate of knots.

We are getting estranged from each other these days. It is why we understand ourselves a little less by the day. We have dedicated more time to building an interconnection with the internet than with humans around us. Our abilities to connect have been put in grave danger.

Someone is going through it all around you and you don’t even notice, after all, digital engagements are all you care about. He will be fine. No! That’s not what being human is about.

We are always trying to do away with pain, too. We think dealing with it by embracing happiness from the digital world will be enough. One comedy skit is enough. We now have little to no natural capacity to tolerate pain and ultimately heal from it. We have abandoned the process.

It is easy to forget your sorrows with these distractions around you — only that it will never take them away.

Someone wakes up in the morning, binge-watches Netflix, or follows up on updates on celebrities for hours, neglecting breakfast just because he can’t make out time away from his new day interference to think of what to eat; he ends up munching on whatever is available. Thinking of what to eat, preparing it, and eating it — that’s called process, but it’s been rejected.

You must have heard someone make a statement like this: “I can stay in a room for a week without stepping out, provided there’s a good phone, stable network, data, electricity, food, and Netflix subscription.”

It has infiltrated us so much that we can’t even live with ourselves without the aid of these virtual assistants. We are being denied our humanity by the day. We live in a digital reality now.

At this point, may I say, if your life is not as balanced as it should be, you have no interest in keeping tabs on everything happening in the virtual space. Drop your phone. That’s not where your focus should be.

Your focus should be on yourself. Concentrate on yourself. Build relationships. Whether you believe it or not, strategic relationships are not built virtually. They are best engineered in person. The best way to communicate gratitude is from mouth to ear. The best way to express love is when it’s acted out.

The more you are disconnected from yourself, the more you are dissatisfied with your life, and the more power other people have over you — it’s why you expressly believe everything you read online, you take time to listen to and buy other people’s opinion because you don’t even have your own. You become short of words by the day. You are finding it more difficult to articulate your thoughts properly.

You really need to commit to yourself, my friend. You need to spend time with yourself. You need to learn to be comfortable alone. Go offline. Breathe. Read. Think. Pray. Invest in yourself, and not only on yourself. Let your value come from your inside. Grow by yourself. Be original. Invest in your passions. Educate yourself. Work on your flaws — it is not who you are; it is who you have chosen to be. Evolve. Be natural. Think naturally. Bring out the best of your natural self. Know your beliefs. Know yourself.

Don’t forget what it means to be human. Connect more on a human personal level. Drop your phone and relate with nature. Relate with humans. Soak in nature. Still your spirit.

Don’t be the person who is always on the phone. You have someone trying to talk to you, and you multitask that conversation by scrolling through your phone; that singular action does not communicate value. Stop it! You don’t deserve anybody’s grace that way, and that’s because by doing that, you dishonor them — even if they are your younger ones. Great relationships are not built that way. If this is what you do, you can’t make a genuine contribution to anybody’s life, especially that of those around you. You’re constantly absent-minded.

Don’t allow social media to strip you of your humanity. Truth is it does not make you more social, it leaves you antisocial in reality because it disconnects you from the people that matter. You leave the people who are truly accessible and focus on people and things that may never be reachable in a thousand years.

You mourn the death of a celebrity’s child more than you mourn your neighbor’s. You share in the joy of your favorite actor, but you can’t even be genuinely happy for your friend. Can’t you see? It’s superficial. That is not what being human entails.

How about the part of it that constantly leaves you materialistic, comparative, and competitive in every way? These are the after-effects of the unreal world you live in. Your soul should be in peace, but it’s finding it hard to be, and that’s because you are ever reaching, always wanting to outdo others.

Let’s return to being humans again.

Now, if you find any of this set of people in your life, I advise you to hang on to them. They know what it means to be human.

• People who make you forget your phone
• Anyone who gives you listening ears
• People who are kind to those who can do nothing for them
• The one you can go a long time without talking to and nothing changes
• Anyone who leaves you feeling good after every meeting
• People who make you feel wanted and feel valued all the time
• Patient teachers
• People who strive to reach out to you at random
• People who are always grateful, genuinely so
• People who tell you tough truths in a gentle way
• People who always try their best to do the right thing

The list is in no way exhaustive but it will give you the idea of the people you should hold on to in your life, and also the kind of person you should be to others.

For the final time, my friends, let us learn to be humans again.