What is it like to be human?

To be human is to be aware — at least sometimes — that something is happening inside us while a world is happening around us.

We sense through a body. We think, imagine, interpret and remember. We feel. We want. We act, often before we fully understand why. Habits carry us forward. Uncertainty interrupts us. Experience changes us.

And somewhere in all of this, we can notice ourselves. We ask: Why did I do that? What am I feeling? Is this what I really want? Who am I becoming? What should I do next?

PentOme begins there — not with the idea that a human being can be reduced to five boxes, but with five useful places to look: thinking, moving, instinctual experience, emotion and vitality/desire.

Several truths can live inside one person.

You can think you should stay. Feel that something is not right. Keep doing what you have always done. Sense tension in your body. And quietly want something completely different.

None of those messages has to be fake. Human experience can be contradictory without being meaningless.

And then something remarkable happens: you can notice the contradiction. You can notice the thought, the feeling, the action, the sensation and the wanting.

That is being human. And the capacity to notice it is what PentOme calls Awareness.

The Five are parts of experience. Awareness notices them. The person is the whole.

Perhaps knowing yourself does not mean arriving at a final description. Perhaps it means becoming a little more able to notice yourself while you are still changing.