Are we human or are we dancer?

A butterfly lands atop a wilting flower.

A message from God, a sign of hope and revival in a time of despair?  Or an insect instinctually attracted to primary colors?

Two strangers meet on a train and fall in love.  Fate or coincidence?

Farbstudie Quadrate by Kandinsky.  “The hand that plays the strings of the soul’s piano” or oil circles on canvass.

There are two players on opposite sides of the ping pong table in the game humans play to make sense out of life volleying back and forth over the question (in the words of rock star Brandon Flowers) Are we Human or are we Dancer? 

Italian Renaissance philosopher and part-time rock star Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (stage name Pico)  answers: Both!   Humans are part animal, part spirit.  We exist in a physical reality of appendicitises, pandas, SUVs and a million other things that make no earthly sense, enduring the chaos only by assembling the random glass shards of our lives into some sort of logical mosaic we call our “story.”   Survival is quite literally impossible without constructing this frame of meaning around ourselves (see suicide statistics and Absurdism).   

We need to believe in something grand: God, Love, social justice, raising a baby, painting a picture... anything worth loosing sleep over, worth skipping lunch for.  “I can’t brush my teeth right now, I have to think about [insert existential idol here].”  Magnitude is exhilarating.  When checking the weather forecast and listening to voicemails become the most important tasks of the day, it’s a slippery slope down to depression and insanity.  We crave something that inhibits us from writing emails, watching the news or making our beds, something so important that it overrides our trivial worries, we want an escape from and--at the same time--a reason for life.  

But what is God without our vices?  How can we know Love without contrasting it to the myriad of inch-deep acquaintances we collect at office parties and book clubs?  What is Art if not an expression of daily experiences?  If everyone were a martyr for a cause who would be left to enjoy its benefits?  What does it serve to achieve our highest ambitions if we cannot find happiness in simple pleasures?  

We are creatures of cycles, of seasons, of change oscillating between work and rest, comfort and struggle, joy and sadness.  In our existential psyche, we perpetually walk the tightrope between the need for The Big and The Small.  In one moment, our arms tilt and grasp for signs of meaning--be it a butterfly landing on a wilting flower--to make us feel part of a larger, more mystical universe.  And in the next moment we bend and flail towards anything ordinary and normal to remind us that we are humans, mortals, flesh and blood. 

Because sometimes butterflies land on flowers for no reason at all.

And sometimes you have to burp in the middle of a prayer.

Sometimes kisses taste more like garlic than rainbows.

Heroes fall, saints sin, people fall out of love.

It’s nice to carry fairy dust in your pocket to sprinkle on certain special moments of our lives, lest we become hardened cynics desensitized to romance and miracles.  But it’s also refreshing to dig our fingernails in the wormy dirt of the real world every once in a while.