Conscious individuality

Because of our living soul or consciousness, we humans are able to step back from what is going on around us. We not only can observe but we can evaluate. We, and we alone, are able to laugh at the world’s ironies and commiserate in shared sadness over its unfairness and its tragedy. For me, this is what Chesterton was describing when he wrote that we must “love the world without being worldly” (59). We are in it even as we were not intended to be of it. The personhood of each individual human is greater than this place.