The Incredible Fact of Human Dignity

So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about dignity, and about what it means to love people. What it means to fall in love—really fall in love, not obsession or possession or addiction. (You’d be surprised how many “happy” couples I know fall into one of those categories.) As I was trying to organize my thoughts on this, I ran across this blog post: 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/01/how-to-love-your-neighbor.html

and it blew my mind. Because love isn’t just about romantic love—it’s about loving people. As in, the whole human race. You might not believe that this is possible, but I do. And I think that without understanding the concept of human dignity, it’s impossible to fall in love freely. Let me explain what I mean.

The blog post that I read does it better than I will, so please read it if you want a better explanation. But I love it so much that I’m just going to quote it heavily and explain how I interpret it.

So first of all, he points out that the one type of person everyone marvels at is a newborn baby. 

“Here the full value of the human person floods us. Our natural inclination is not simply to give the baby his necessities, but to gaze in silent worship at the tiny fingernails, the nose barely more than a lump, the searching, seeking eyes. Why?” 

We love the newness of babies. Everyone intuits their dignity.

Yes, I stole this off of the other blog too.

The blog continues, 

“Then these newborns grow and — unless we are their parents — we lose our instinct of awe. This is a tragedy, if only because it is not true. We marvel at babies because they are new, but I maintain that the claim of subsequent aging is a puffed-up myth. Human beings are always new.”

When I read this I was so struck. It’s true—we treat babies like the miracles that they are, but as soon as they hit toddlerhood that awe disappears. We pass hundreds of people on the street that were once little babies in their mother’s arms. Has that dignity disappeared?

No, and the evidence that the blog gives is awesome. Just read this:

“It is an incredible fact — and one that I should be shot for not noticing until now — that it is not only acceptable, but rather expected that you treat your lover like a newborn baby. You develop pet-names, speak softly, create a nonsense language, marvel at fingers and hands — you smell the top of each other’s heads, for goodness’ sakes!....In somewhat of a profound mystery, Love urges us to treat another like a newborn. It is Love that inspires us to reject the lie that human beings grow old, and thus boring, and instead to call a human being what they are: Baby. Love is not blind, it is the gift of sight! It removes the cataracts of boredom and repetition, allows us to see each other for the first time.”

BAM! YES! I read this and got so excited. When we fall in love, we rediscover human dignity. We marvel and stare in awe at this person who has become new in our eyes. In reality, they haven’t changed at all. But finally we see the truth about them. We intuit their specialness just as we intuit the specialness of a newborn. In love we recognize the truth about humanity. And if we hold on to this truth, then it keeps us from trying to possess our loved ones. How can we possess this beauty? Humans are so much more than playthings. With the magnitude of the dignity of this person in mind, we can love them freely, always in awe of the fact that they exist. And who doesn’t want to love in this way? Or, to put it more urgently, who doesn’t want to be loved in this way?? Anything else is a lie.

Sorry if this is too philosophical, but I thought it was too beautiful not to share. Because if this is true, then it’s a lie that each human being is not precious. Everyone is a miracle. Everyone has this beauty, this dignity. Even you, you know?