Humanity Through a Single Lens: San Francisco
By: Nathaniel Mueller
Tags: San Francisco, American Dream, Philosophy, Struggle, Humanity

Howling, he is howling loud, sitting on piss-stained-steps with a tied off arm, a needle and syringe protruding, he is howling on Market Street. It is one of the busiest city streets in the US. It’s around 5PM in the evening and the street is crowded. My six-year-old daughter asks me why he is howling as we walk by. I tell her sometimes people get lost and they howl like wolves to try and find their way, he is searching for something. I hope he finds his way. She howls for second and hopes he does too.

I’m in San Francisco, one of the most unique cities in the World. It’s a city that stares human potential in the eye and dares it to go further, and in San Francisco it does, both up and down. This city is the walking tour of human potential and the human condition. All that is needed to dive into the depths is a pair of Air-pods, a soundtrack to match the journey, some comfortable shoes and eyes open wide enough to walk the city and truly take in the messiness, courage, creativity, and indifference it requires to create this monolithic outburst of raw humanity.

There is a greatness in this city but also an apathetic embarrassment, an ingrained, almost trained ability to look the other way and float above the fray. For outside every UBER, Salesforce, Twitter and LinkedIn there are sidewalks with human feces and victims of a world that just maybe demanded so much it fractured a mind or convinced someone to chemically opt-out. They weren’t made for a city like this… really, very few are. Titans and the most durable survive here… the chasers, the doers, the believers — the ones who can take a punch and take many more. The ones who’s sanity is sometimes tied to chasing an almost impossible level of success. They thrive here… or survive here. It’s harder to tell the difference than you would think.

It’s a city capable enough to change the entire world yet helpless enough to not be able to fix itself, it is in a word… human. Executives are pushing the bounds of San Francisco’s influence, like Marc Benioff of Salesforce have made noble efforts to bring the two realities of their city together but even the doers and dreamers have struggled to make a dent. Humanity seems incurable and San Francisco is one of the most honest depictions of humanity’s greatness, greediness, frailty and brokenness.

San Francisco is a paradox… its that unreconcilable enigma that proves we all understand the world far less than necessary. It’s a tribute to our ability to allow two realities to exist side by side, knowing all too well the unacceptability of that duality. Again… it’s a staggeringly honest city, more honest than most.

As I walk the streets I too am challenged to chase more and be more… to dream big and believe the extent of what is possible but I am also challenged to be more human… to remember the struggle and battle that is this life — the one we are all living for the first time, with no experience. How do we remember everyday how fragile our own sanity is? How do we keep our fragile reality going? The one we constructed that hopefully brings us meaning, purpose, peace and happiness. How do we keep ourselves fueled just enough to stay in the fight but also live?

Maybe, in the end, San Francisco is just the city that represents potential… our potential to be, and to be more. The potential to be more human. Maybe it’s appropriate a city with such a famous bridge so honestly portrays our potential to bridge both humanities gap and the one we so often find within ourselves.