How to Human

How to Human Plot Summary

Introduction

It was 1985, and a young boy named Carlos sat in a barbershop chair at Northlake Mall in Decatur, Georgia. His barber, Curtis, was meticulously shaping his afro when suddenly, chaos erupted outside. A woman's desperate screams pierced the air as a man raced past the window carrying a small child. Without hesitation, Curtis dropped his clippers and ran out the door, joining a diverse group of strangers – two skinny white teenagers, a heavyset Black man, and a well-dressed businessman – all racing to help. Carlos and his mother watched from inside, hearts pounding, as these strangers, different in every visible way, united in a split-second decision to rescue a child in danger. This moment captured something profound about human connection that often gets lost in our divided world. Deep within each of us lies an inherent desire to help others, a reflex that can overcome our differences when activated. Yet in today's world, we're constantly bombarded with messages suggesting humanity is broken beyond repair, that the divisions between us are too wide to bridge. This couldn't be further from the truth. We don't need to rebuild humanity; we simply need to recalibrate it – like pressing Control-Alt-Delete on a sluggish computer. The pages ahead offer a roadmap for this recalibration, showing how we can rediscover our shared humanity through being authentic, seeing others clearly, and freeing both ourselves and those around us from the chains that bind us. The journey begins with remembering who we truly are and awakening the compassion that lies dormant within.

Chapter 1: Being Human in a Digital Age

The year 2020 started with Australian wildfires consuming forty-six million acres and killing three billion animals – what would have been the biggest news story in other years. But by March, most of us barely remembered that story. Why? Because of Covid. I call it the "Covid Coma." As the pandemic spread globally, we experienced a strange mix of isolation and unity. I remember getting a message from someone in Wuhan in January, asking for prayers as a virus hit their community hard. I'm fairly certain I sent a few prayer-hand emojis and called it a day. But as weeks progressed and the virus approached our shores, that lump in our throats grew. When lockdown began, I had an idea to bring some hope to my neighborhood. I dragged a fourteen-foot inflatable Santa Claus out of storage, set him up on my front lawn with a sign reading "HO HO HOPE. We got this!" Cars began honking as they drove by. Families stopped to take photos. For that brief moment, we were all riding through the pandemic together, hoping we'd get through it together. Nobody asked about my vaccination status before feeling a bit of hope from my silly Covid Santa. Nobody questioned my thoughts on lockdown policies before honking at the sign. It wasn't complicated. It was simple. This simplicity reflects something important about our humanity. Even Jesus, whom I've spent decades studying, kept things remarkably simple. If you gave someone who had never heard of Jesus the Gospel of Luke and asked them to read it, they wouldn't need a doctorate to understand what He was about. They'd likely say Jesus focused on two things: loving God and loving people. The former accelerates the latter. I know some pretty loving atheists, but I also know that falling in love with God allows you to love people in seemingly impossible ways. Some people try to make you believe there's an obstacle course you must defeat before you can truly love others. They might try to convince you that love needs some sort of complicated scaffolding. But that's not it. The beginning of love, the human decision to make someone feel loved, isn't complicated. Just find ways to love God and love others. This simple focus can heal so many relationships. The complicated part is loving those people you absolutely don't feel like loving – but we'll get to that later. When we strip away the complexity, being human boils down to something remarkably straightforward: see the humanity in others, and respond with simple, authentic love. This isn't just a nice idea – it's the pathway back to our shared humanity in an age where digital barriers so often keep us apart.

Chapter 2: Seeing Others Beyond Biases

As 2020 marched on into early summer, it continued to mix civil unrest with Covid. Tensions escalated as videos of unarmed Black people killed by police circulated, followed by ten thousand opinions on how the situations could have been handled differently. I tried my hardest to get people on the same page, but I realized something important: Those of us in the Black community were teaching from a place of our own personal stories and experiences as victims of racism or racial bias. While this approach works to create understanding, it doesn't always provide clear action steps to help defeat subconscious racial bias or remove racist actions people may not recognize as racist. Just getting people to understand something should never be the goal. All that creates is conviction. And conviction without action is useless. So my strategy changed: How do we move to action? As I was creating videos teaching about racial bias, something remarkable happened right in my own front yard. I had lived across the street from an older white man for four years. His house had an American flag draped across the front door, and he had always seemed angry and unfriendly. We never spoke, despite living just twenty-five feet apart. I had developed my own bias about him, assuming he was racist based on his age, race, and the flag display. This bias was built on real experiences – of the nine men who had called me the N-word since I'd lived in Tennessee, all were older white men with American flags on their person or vehicle. One morning, I noticed this neighbor painting one of his decorative yard bunnies black. I watched in confusion – why paint just one bunny black? The next day, I finally worked up the courage to cross the street and ask him. "Well," he said with unexpected warmth, "with everything that's going on in the country today, with all the protests and the Black stuff, this is my way of saying what I believe about this country. It's my way of saying that I believe your life matters." I was stunned. In seven seconds, four years of judgment evaporated. This man wasn't racist – he was the opposite. The problem wasn't with him; it was with the bias I had placed on him. We talked about his history in Nashville, his service in Vietnam, and how a Black woman had helped raise him as a child. "I can't imagine anyone looking at her any differently than they would look at me," he said about the woman who was like a second mother to him. Our biases often prevent us from truly seeing others. Even Jesus addressed this when He encountered the woman caught in adultery. Rather than condemning her or joining those ready to stone her, He saw her humanity first. The religious leaders stood on an issue; Jesus walked with a person. This is the profound difference between standing on issues and walking with people – one creates division, the other builds bridges. The journey to seeing others clearly begins with acknowledging our own biases. We must be willing to cross the street, metaphorically and literally, to truly see the humanity in those we've pre-judged. Only then can we begin to rebuild the connections our divided world so desperately needs.

Chapter 3: Finding Compassion in Political Division

If you say the year 2020 out loud, you'll likely get a visceral reaction from most people who lived through it. My kids described it as "Ugh," "sucked," and one word I can't repeat in polite company. Yet there was something uniquely unifying about the early days of the pandemic. Remember those Italians singing from their balconies? New Yorkers applauding healthcare workers from their windows? There was a brief window when we seemed to remember our shared humanity. On March 11, 2020, my mom called from Southern California to say she wasn't feeling well after returning from a wedding. The next day, her temperature rose to 103 degrees. I told her to get tested for Covid and stay away from my dad, who was in the early stages of dementia. Both suggestions proved nearly impossible – my father relied on her completely, and tests were unavailable. For an entire week, she went from hospital to hospital without being able to get tested, despite worsening symptoms. When I shared about my mom's situation on Instagram, something beautiful happened. People flooded my direct messages with offers to help my parents. They brought dinner, contacted friends in the health department, and shared advice. Most remarkably, nobody asked if she was vaccinated before deciding whether to care. Nobody questioned if she had taken proper precautions. They simply cared because another human was suffering. After fourteen days with a 103-degree fever, my mom began improving, and twenty-five days after symptoms started, she finally received her positive test result. It baffles me how quickly we forget that this kind of compassion is not only possible but essential. We didn't wait for our vaccinated acquaintances to experience side effects or our unvaccinated friends to get sick enough for hospitalization. We simply responded with compassion to human suffering, regardless of the circumstances. Compassion isn't supposed to be limited to those who share our beliefs. Jesus illustrated this in His parable of the lost sheep, where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one that wandered away. The ninety-nine might have thought, "He decided to go his own way. It's his own fault for getting lost!" But the shepherd, moved by compassion, went after the one anyway. This is our invitation: Go after the one. Not just to bring them back to wherever you are, because maybe they left you on purpose. Go find them wherever they are and let them know they are loved. Tell them you'll love them if they decide to come back and hang with you, and you'll love them just as much if they don't. The point of going after them isn't necessarily to bring them back; it's to show them true compassion. That kind of compassion has been missing in our world, and if we want to get back to being human, we must recover it. Who is that person in your life you need to find and flood with compassion? The wonderful thing is that it's not even about them receiving your compassion; it's about you giving it so you can remember that you have it in you to give.

Chapter 4: The Power of Empathy in Action

We did it! The Whittaker familia made it through 2020! By the skin of our teeth, but still. The year 2020 tried to take us out over and over again. I'm serious. On Christmas morning 2020, my family and I were opening presents when we felt a loud boom. The windows shook, and Heather and I looked at each other wondering if we were at war. We lived approximately three miles south of downtown Nashville, and I did what any Gen X dad would do: I opened Twitter. Within thirty seconds, #NashvilleBombing was trending. Someone had loaded an RV with explosives and blown up an entire city block. This was the cherry on top of 2020. My family and I found ourselves on a Delta flight to Sacramento on January 6, 2021. We were getting out of Nashville for a few days of skiing in Lake Tahoe. I hadn't even logged on to Wi-Fi during the flight because I didn't want to see what was happening in the world. After landing, I turned on my phone and saw a message from my friend Nick: "Bro, the Capitol is under attack. The U.S. Capitol. Are you watching this?" I initially thought some foreign nation was attacking our Capitol, but I was shocked to discover our elected representatives were under attack from Americans. When I saw photos of a man carrying a Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol, I felt sick. I shared my raw feelings on Instagram, expressing why seeing that flag in our nation's Capitol was so painful for me as a Black man. I expected thunderous pushback, but there wasn't much. Both sides of the political aisle were disturbed by what had happened. That day decimated much of the hope I had that we could right the ship. I felt more shackled than I cared to admit. During this difficult time, I received a simple text from my friend Rob that changed everything. All he wrote were three words: "I see now." And that was all it took for the floodgates to open up. I began to cry – ugly-cry. It was as if I had been holding my breath and didn't know it, carrying a weight I hadn't recognized until it was lifted. Rob and I had many deep conversations over the previous four years, with me explaining my concerns as a Black man in America and him sharing his perspective as a conservative white man. The goal wasn't to turn him from his conservative roots or make him lean left. It was simply to be seen. Those three words – "I see now" – didn't mean he was turning his back on his values; it meant he was facing me and protecting mine. This is a perfect example of what it means to free someone. So often, those who need freedom don't even know they're carrying the weight of the world until someone shows up and takes it off them. Rob didn't know that his three little words would give his friend the freedom he didn't know he needed. Who can you send three words to that could breathe life back into their lungs after years of them holding their breath without even knowing? The depth of human connection comes not from agreeing on everything, but from truly seeing each other across our differences. When we move beyond sympathy to genuine empathy – feeling with rather than feeling for – we unlock the true power of human connection.

Chapter 5: Creating Community Through Small Acts

It was fall 2020, and I felt as though humanity was at least attempting to heal, if only a small fraction. But I was tired – tired from a year of educating people who did not want to be educated, tired from forgiving those who didn't care if they were forgiven. I knew deep in my heart there was hope for humanity, but it was hard to see, especially after January 6th. I didn't know if I could maintain the energy to continue the good fight. Later that year, I received a direct message about a young Black mother and wife recently diagnosed with epilepsy. She was having hundreds of seizures a day, though three months prior, she had been completely healthy. She had been trying to raise enough money for a seizure-alert dog that would warn her before she had a seizure so she could get to a safe place. She had raised nine thousand dollars of her twenty-five-thousand-dollar goal. I wondered if my Instagram community, which I had begun calling the "Instafamilia," could help get her closer to her goal. At first, I hesitated, thinking, What if I ask and only a hundred dollars comes in? That would be embarrassing. But then I realized my own pride was getting in the way. So what if it's only a hundred dollars? That's a hundred more than she has now. I recorded a video asking the Instafamilia to try to help this woman reach her goal. An hour later, my phone started buzzing like crazy. When I checked her GoFundMe page, my jaw dropped. In just one hour, the Instafamilia had contributed twenty-seven thousand dollars, blowing past her goal. In the following twenty-three hours, they gave more than forty thousand dollars total. I was crying (I cry a lot, if you haven't picked that up by now). This wasn't a one-time occurrence. The Instafamilia went on to raise nearly a million dollars for various causes – $280,000 for a nonprofit helping Black and Brown youth become river guides in Alaska, $250,000 for kids who lost homes to wildfires, $120,000 for my former guitar player who was hospitalized, and another $120,000 for a woman who lost her husband and baby in the same week. One of my favorite stories happened when I was waiting in an airport. I heard someone playing piano and found an elderly man named Tonee performing beautifully while no one paid attention. He had about twenty dollars in his tip jar. I sat down next to him, and we talked for about ten minutes. I learned he had been on kidney dialysis for nine years, twelve hours every night. I asked him the biggest tip he'd ever received. "Six hundred dollars," he replied. I opened Instagram and told the Instafamilia it was time to do their thing. Thirty minutes and ten thousand dollars later, I told Tonee about his tip. "Who gave me ten thousand dollars?" he shouted. "Eighty thousand people who love you and don't even know you," I replied. After some tears, he looked me in the eye and said, "My faith in humanity has been restored." By day's end, Tonee had received more than sixty thousand dollars – and remarkably, he gave most of it away, continuing the cycle of generosity. This empathy thing is addictive. When we allow ourselves to feel with others rather than just for them, we create ripples of compassion that extend far beyond our immediate reach. These small acts of community-building demonstrate that despite our differences, we share a fundamental desire to help one another – the very essence of what makes us human.

Chapter 6: Freeing Ourselves to Connect Authentically

Did you know that destroying something is much easier than building something? It's oddly more satisfying to watch something get destroyed than to be built. Our mouths open slightly in awe when we watch a building collapse during a demolition but tend to open in a yawn during the months or years that building was under construction. To see the sheer, quick force of destruction appeals to our human nature. Building something takes a lot more work, conversation, and planning. But if we do it right, at the end stands something we can be proud of – something for generations to come. That's why it's important to recognize what you're getting good at. Are you becoming a demolitionist or a constructionist? Are you listening to more voices calling for destruction or for building? Any person could destroy a building with a single match and well-placed gasoline, but could the same person build that building? Of course not. In order for us to be more human, I'm asking us all to be builders. The world is overrun with demolitionists – people bringing things down, cutting with their words, razing lives with their actions, dismissing or mocking their neighbors, living like only they matter. But destroying is easy. You want a real challenge? Something worthy of your uniqueness and skills? Be a builder instead. See a problem? Build a solution. See a need? Build a solution. Managing a hard conversation or a difficult relationship isn't a science. But I'll tell you something I've found true when I've shifted my thinking on important subjects: The person who helped me shift never made me feel small. Minds change when they are made to feel large – when they are respected and gently challenged, when they are helped to stretch and make room for another point of view. What really matters most is also what's most simple: showing up and loving. As you stand up for what you believe in, build up those who disagree with you instead of tearing them down. Then watch their capacity to understand increase, right along with yours. We are called as humans to wake up every day with one goal: to love others ferociously. All others. As we learn to do this, we will watch hearts open to change much faster than sharp words or clever comebacks ever could. We need each other. All of us. We were created with each other in mind. Think about harmony in music – a melody can carry a song alone, but harmony makes it explode with beauty. The harmony makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Harmony happens not in spite of our differences but because of them. Let's not try to be just a catchy melody; let's live as the symphony of humanity we were created to be. That's only possible together.

Summary

In a world increasingly defined by its divisions, the path back to our shared humanity lies not in grand gestures or political victories but in the small, daily choices we make to see, connect with, and free one another. The stories throughout this journey reveal a profound truth: beneath our differences lies a universal desire for connection, understanding, and belonging. From the spontaneous rescue in a shopping mall to the overwhelming generosity shown to a piano player in an airport, we've witnessed how empathy and compassion can transcend the barriers we've built between us. The invitation before us is beautifully simple yet profoundly challenging: be authentic in who you are, see others beyond your biases, and free both yourself and those around you through acts of genuine compassion. This isn't about erasing our differences or avoiding difficult conversations – it's about approaching those differences with curiosity rather than judgment, with a desire to understand rather than to win. As one neighbor discovered when he finally crossed the street to speak with someone he had prejudged, freedom often begins with the willingness to have our assumptions challenged. And as my friend Rob demonstrated with his three simple words – "I see now" – sometimes the greatest gift we can offer another human is the acknowledgment that we truly see them. In our divided world, perhaps the most revolutionary act is to choose, again and again, to walk with people rather than stand on issues, to build rather than to destroy, and to love ferociously even when it's difficult. The symphony of humanity awaits, not when we all sing the same note, but when we contribute our unique voices to a harmony that's only possible together.

About Author

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Carlos Whittaker

Carlos Whittaker is a best-selling author and expert storyteller to all kinds of audiences– from parents to corporate America to the non-profit sector. No matter who you are, his message is for you. Carlos uses his vast and varied personal life experience to captivate and engage audiences in ways that few else can.In his books, How to Human, Enter Wild, Moment Maker, and Kill the Spider, Carlos reminds us that when we are connected to God and good to ourselves, we can be even better for others. Humans do not exist in a vacuum, so when we address every facet of our lives, we create a greater capacity for relationships, ministry, work, creativity, and patience.Carlos excels at encouraging people to to show up for their neighbor, regardless of who they are and what they believe. Join Carlos and countless others in the pursuit of being human together.He and his wife Heather live in Nashville, Tennessee, with their three amazing children, where you can find them working on the family farm, planning trips around the world, and preparing to be empty-nesters.

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