I’m a fan of language learning. I especially love the fact that languages often don’t translate between each other directly. Whenever you see side by side translations, the words you see in the second language are simply the closest approximation to how to best express the idea of the first. Many words, phrases, or idioms have no direct translation. Whenever that’s the case, it typically reveals something special about the culture.
One of the things I’m proudest of, when it comes to my Filipino heritage, is the way visitors to the Philippines absolutely gush over the warmth and hospitality of my kinfolk. There’s something really special about being extravagantly welcomed somewhere. I’ve experienced being welcomed by entire villages waving palms and shouting. I’ve also experienced having somebody throw away a whole day’s plans just to spend the day with me, a foreigner.
At first, celebrating someone else’s presence like that might seem over the top. The idea of throwing away a whole day’s worth of my plans because somebody I don’t know is visiting my town seems absurd.
But if you think for a second about how miraculous each person’s life is, about the mathematical improbability of any one person’s existence… it’s a little less absurd. If you think that the connections we make with other people are some of the most important things we can experience in life… yeah, it makes a lot more sense.
But still, with our world becoming so digital, our schedules becoming so tightly packed, and our focus being so in-demand, it’s easy to lose sight of this. Instead, other people are treated more like distractions or inconveniences.
Lately, I’ve been trying to combat these habits by simply reminding myself: hey, there’s a human here.
There’s a human here, be present.
There’s a human here, be curious.
There’s a human here, be open.
There’s a human here. In Tagalog, visitors declare themselves by announcing tao po. This often replaces the need for a knock.
At a surface level, such a declaration helps the person at home know that their visitor is indeed a human, and not any one of the many less desirable creatures preeminent in Filipino folklore.Tao Po has both a social function, and a superstitious function. It’s at least partially an apology in recognition that you’re intruding on someone’s space.
As another Filipino expression puts it, madaling maging tao, pero mahirap magpaka-tao. It’s easy to be a human being, but it’s hard to act like one, sometimes. Part of the Filipino spirt is constantly aiming to tap into our shared humanity with another person.
It reminds me of what one of my friends Brad Montague says: We’re all just humans who want to be loved. In fact, he made stickers reading I’m just a human who wants to be loved to stick on your TV frame and the edge of your laptop and on newspaper photos to remind us that the people we so doing things that we often find frustrating and bewildering are still humans. Ones who want to be loved.
Perhaps it’s helpful to begin an encounter with the phrase, there’s a human here.
It helps with some of the heavy lifting, when it comes to humanizing one another.
People matter. And I love the way a simple phrase like tao po has meaning. Being human means something. And the humanity within each of us is always in search of the humanity within others.