To Remain Human

A poem by Brian Lewis

A friend of mine recently shared this poem with me. Stunning. Encapsulates so brilliantly, and so tenderly, what we are all experiencing together on our planet right now.

Thank you for this poem, and the heart that can pen it, Mr. Lewis.

***

To Remain Human

The nervous system
was never designed
to carry the grief
of an entire planet

Yet here we are

A child starving
crosses our screen
between weather reports
and advertisements

Forests burn beside stock prices

Wars arrive
in the same hand
that holds photographs
of our grandchildren

And somewhere inside us
something ancient
keeps trying
to respond

This is the exhaustion
few know how to name

Not simply stress
Not simply fear

But the unbearable collision
between the human heart
and the scale
of modern awareness

We were meant
to know the sorrow
of the village

Now we are asked
to metabolize
the suffering
of civilizations

And many are drowning

Some in rage
Some in distraction
Some in endless performance
Some in irony so thick
it becomes a shield
against feeling anything real

Others quietly disappear
inside themselves
their spirits dimming
beneath the constant demand
to remain informed
productive
available
certain

The world keeps shouting

Choose a side
Move faster
Consume more
Outrage harder
Win

But the soul
does not speak
in that language

The soul speaks
through silence
through grief
through awe
through the sudden trembling
that arrives
when one human being
finally feels
the reality
of another

This is why
so many people
stand at the edge
of breakdown

Not because they are weak
But because they are porous
Because somewhere beneath
the armor
their humanity
is still functioning

And perhaps
that is what must now
be protected

Not merely ecosystems
Not merely institutions

But the fragile interior capacities
that allow human beings
to remain human
inside an age
that profits from fragmentation

To remain tender
without collapsing

To remain informed
without becoming consumed

To remain compassionate
without surrendering discernment

To stand before suffering
without turning away
and yet also
without allowing suffering
to transform the heart
into stone

This is harder
than revolution

Harder than ideology
Harder than certainty

Because it asks something
few civilizations
have ever learned to cultivate
strength
without cruelty

Perhaps this is why
small acts matter so much now

A hand on a shoulder
A teacher
who notices the silent child
A man planting trees
whose shade
he will never live to sit beneath

A woman refusing
to let cynicism
be mistaken for wisdom

These are not small things

They are the architecture
of psychological survival

The architecture
of repair

And maybe the future
will not ultimately be decided
by those
who accumulated the most power
but by those
who learned
how to carry immense complexity
without surrendering
their capacity
for love

Because civilizations do not die
only from invasion
or collapse

They also die
when people can no longer feel
one another

When exhaustion
becomes identity
When distraction
becomes culture
When tenderness
becomes embarrassment
When the human nervous system
finally says
enough

But I do not believe
that ending
is inevitable

I think there are still people
quietly rebuilding
the interior world
Still people
teaching children wonder
Still people
protecting beauty
Still people
who understand
that compassion
is not sentiment

It is infrastructure

And perhaps
the task before us now
is not merely
to save the world

but to become
the kind of people
capable
of inhabiting it together

               by Brian Lewis

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