Human nature
If they say, “Why…why does he do me that way?” tell ‘em that it’s human nature.
For most of human history, survival meant guarding scarce resources. That scarcity wired us for competition, suspicion, and—when push came to shove—lethal violence. Imagine two prehistoric nomadic tribes with different languages and customs, both forced into the same valley because weather or predators made it impossible for them to move on. There was only so much water, game, and forage. Farming technology was thousands of years in the future. In that situation, coexistence and compromise weren’t always options. Our ancestors fought to the death to survive, and that dog-eat-dog conditioning remains lodged in our modern brains and bodies.
These days, there are plenty of resources for everyone to thrive if we organize and share intelligently. Yet the old scarcity mindset still dominates our collective consciousness, so we hoard, protect, and mistrust instead of cooperating. That tension shows up in relationships, workplaces, politics, and anywhere else where people must negotiate competing needs.
Still, human beings aren’t locked into primal scripts. As the quality of our consciousness evolves, egoic impulses like attachment, greed, and fear will soften. Our focus will naturally shift toward giving, serving, and helping others. We’ll invent systems that distribute resources more fairly, and develop social practices that reward cooperation. The New Earth will be loads of fun for a steward species metamorphosed—conscious, whole, and free.
That said, some conflicts between even the most intelligent people are genuinely incompatible. Good people can want things that simply can’t coexist. For example, if you get a dream job in New York and your partner is rooted in Los Angeles, you can’t have the dream job and still get to live with your partner. These forks in the road require tough choices. And when we avoid making a choice, indecision drains our energy and ejects us from the present moment, the only portal to inner peace.
When we have to make a hard choice, our only obligation is to follow our heart. If we ignore the heart, resentment and regret creep in—poisons that lead to dysfunction and calamity, both of which are reliable relationship rotters.
When experiencing indecisiveness, practice intensely focusing on the heart, consciously making a choice, and asking the heart if it’s the right thing to do. If there’s a warm, comforting sensation in the heart space, then it’s a sound choice. If there’s discomfort, then it’s an unsound choice.
Putting yourself first and trusting your heart isn’t selfishness, it’s integrity. It clears the path for honest relationships and sensible, compassionate action.
So when people ask why somebody behaved the way they did, remember: some of it is ancient wiring, some of it is choice, and some of it is the result of a heart ignored. In the end, it’s all human nature.
