The relational aspect of humans is where humanity derives its meaning.
Gosh, does that make sense?
Relationships take you to meaning and value and ethic.
You do not find purpose or inherent worth in mere matter.
I like that language and words are meant for others too. They are tools that communicate our condition to others.
Crazy – it seems like we are created for partnership and community and fellowship.
I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans—i.e., “human relationality”—that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.
-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)
