It’s astonishing how much of life we can miss while going about our business.
Someone is trying to tell us something, but we’re already preparing our response. A familiar irritation arrives and suddenly it’s the only thing we can feel. We’re so busy getting something done that we barely notice the beauty of the morning, the kindness in someone’s gesture, or the unexpected possibility opening right in front of us.
I don’t mean that we should be endlessly present, open-minded, or receptive to everything. I mean becoming more available to what’s actually happening—including what doesn’t fit our expectations, challenges our assumptions, or surprises us with something we didn’t know we wanted.
We each have familiar ways of moving through the world. We know how to be helpful, competent, charming, independent, responsible, discerning, or in control. Some of these ways of being have served us beautifully. Others developed because we needed protection or belonging. Most are so familiar that we hardly notice them.
And then there are the habits of the world we’ve grown up in: the assumption that more is better, that independence is strength, that everything should be improved, that discomfort is a problem to solve, that time should be productive, that life should somehow be manageable.
These habits shape what we notice and what we take for granted. They can make whole dimensions of life difficult to perceive.
And of course, there are the moments when something gets stirred up. Someone disappoints us, disagrees with us, doesn’t see us, or wants something we don’t want. Suddenly our world can become very small, organized around a feeling, a story, or an urgent need to make something different.
None of this is unusual. The trouble isn’t that we have habits, assumptions, and reactions. It’s that they can become the limits of what we’re able to encounter.
So what might it mean to become more available?
Perhaps it begins with noticing the familiar role we’re playing, without making it wrong. Recognizing that an assumption we’ve always treated as reality is only one way of seeing things. Allowing a difficult feeling to be here without requiring it to disappear before anything else can matter.
But availability isn’t only about making room for what’s difficult.
It’s also about being reachable by what delights us.
Another person may reveal a side of themselves we never suspected. A conversation may wander somewhere neither person intended. We may notice something beautiful in a place we’ve passed a hundred times, or find ourselves laughing when we’d been certain there was nothing to laugh about.
Something arrives that we couldn’t have planned.
And perhaps, most importantly, availability means being willing to be changed by what we encounter.
Other people don’t have to remain characters in stories we’re already telling. The living world doesn’t have to remain a backdrop for our plans. We can discover that our good intentions haven’t had the impact we hoped, that someone sees things differently, or that what we thought was obvious isn’t obvious at all.
This isn’t always comfortable. Greater availability can bring delight, wonder, and freedom, but it can also bring grief, uncertainty, responsibility, and the unsettling recognition that we don’t know what we thought we knew.
Why would we want that?
Because something becomes possible when more of life can reach us.
For ourselves, there may be more aliveness and freedom, less need to repeat the same familiar moves.
Between us, there may be more room for genuine encounter, difference, affection, play, and possibilities that neither person could have imagined alone.
And in the wider world, we may become more able to recognize and respond to what’s needed, rather than simply doing more of what we’ve always done.
One of the questions at the heart of Humaning is:
What is this time asking of me?
It’s a different question from What do I want to accomplish? or even How can I help?
It invites us to listen, to notice, to become curious about what we don’t yet understand. But listening doesn’t always happen before action. Sometimes we learn what is needed by participating, experimenting, making mistakes, and paying attention to what comes back.
The question asks us to consider that what we have to offer may not be what we assumed, and that what is needed may require us to change.
Of course, not every demand is ours to meet. Availability doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. Sometimes what’s called for is a boundary, a refusal, protecting something we love, or recognizing that someone else knows more about a situation than we do.
Availability isn’t passive receptivity. It’s a growing capacity to notice and respond within relationships we’re already part of.
This is the inquiry at the heart of Humaning.
Humaning is an emerging collection of practices for becoming more available to life—within ourselves, with one another, and in relationship with the larger living world.
Three practice fields are taking shape: Between Us, exploring the mystery and possibilities of actual relationship; Villaging, exploring interdependence, shared life, and mutual care; and Widening Kin, exploring our relationships and responsibilities within the larger living world.
These aren’t stages or destinations. They’re places to practice noticing what’s here, what we’ve learned not to see, and what becomes possible when more of life is allowed to matter.
I don’t think anyone gets to become permanently available. Life is too surprising for that, and our familiar ways of protecting and organizing ourselves don’t simply disappear.
But perhaps we can become more practiced at recognizing when our world has become small, more curious about what lies beyond our familiar picture, and more willing to be changed by what we encounter.
Especially now, when so much is changing and so much is being asked.
The question isn’t only who we want to become or how we want to live.
It’s also what this time is asking of us.
And whether we’re becoming available enough to hear.