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Being Human

There are aspects of each of us that others rarely see—the dark impulses of the virtuous and principled, the warmth concealed or repressed in the distant and unemotional, the passion singeing the barricaded hearts of the phlegmatic, the anger seething beneath the chill surface of the terminally composed, the abject terror clawing at the iron core of the courageous, the murderous fantasies driving the tender pacifist to the edge of brutality or beyond, the doubts and desires that like tireless demons silently stalk the pious, all the yearnings, fears, and vulnerabilities we conceal or deny out of habit, out of need.

It’s when outside forces close in and we feel threatened, or when some trigger, hard-wired in our psyches, is tripped, or perhaps when animal instinct leaps forth to subjugate reason, that our masks slip away and we are exposed as the flawed, proud, desperate, susceptible, complex, and agonizingly human creatures we are. What is revealed might be shocking, uplifting, horrifying, or heartwarming, it might be utterly inexplicable, but it’s all a part of what we are, what we cannot help but be, and it is a large part of what makes people interesting and real, both in fiction and in life.