Be a Better Human
It didn’t sound like advice or self-help. It sounded like something said across a table, direct and unguarded.
My wife bought a new tee shirt that says, “Be a Better Human.” She didn’t make a big deal of it, just folded it into the laundry with the others. But when I saw it, the words caught me in a way that most slogans don’t. Maybe it was the simplicity, four small words, no logo, no brand, no hidden agenda. It didn’t sound like advice or self-help. It sounded like something said across a table, direct and unguarded.
Most messages that reach us these days are layered with strategy, crafted to persuade, sell, or perform virtue. This one wasn’t. It just sat there, plain, like a mirror. The phrasing matters. It doesn’t say do better or act better. It says be. That verb changes everything. It moves the question from conduct to condition, from outcome to orientation. The challenge isn’t to upgrade behavior; it’s to inhabit one’s own humanity more fully.
That’s what struck me in the moment. I found myself pausing, not to judge whether I was good or bad, but to actually picture myself as a better human. The image wasn’t about success or moral comparison. It was subtle: more patience with others, more curiosity before conclusion, a steadier presence in conversation. It made me think about the gap between what we often do and who we’re capable of being.
It made me think about the gap between what we often do and who we’re capable of being.
There’s a moral undertone here, but it’s not moralism. It doesn’t accuse. It assumes we can be better, that something in us still remembers what better feels like. In that sense, it’s restorative language, not corrective. And maybe that’s why it slipped past my usual resistance to slogans and the noise of constant messaging. It speaks to a kind of moral fatigue that many of us live with, where everything feels performative and few things feel true.
In a culture that measures worth by visibility and speed, “Be a Better Human” re-centers the conversation on what’s prior to both: being itself. The line could easily sound naïve, but it isn’t. It acknowledges that change begins not with having more or doing more, but with remembering what it means to exist as someone among others; to be accountable, to be kind, to be awake. It brings to mind a Werner Erhard quote from 1975: be, do, have. We keep trying to have our way into being, when the order has always been the other way around.
So, I’ve started to treat that tee shirt less as apparel and more as a prompt. It’s a simple artifact that asks a serious question: what does it mean to live as if humanity still matters? Not in abstraction, but in tone of voice, in how we speak to a cashier, in how we carry disagreement or integrity. These are the places where be better lives or dies.
The world doesn’t need louder ambition, it needs steadier humanity.
Maybe that’s the hidden power of such ordinary language. It reminds us that the moral life isn’t somewhere out there in systems and policies, but right here in the daily practice of being human with one another. It doesn’t demand perfection. It just refuses to let us forget that being human is already a calling and that how we answer it, moment by moment, shapes the world we share.
Closing Note
As another year turns, I’m reminded that growth doesn’t always come from doing more, but from seeing more clearly and being more fully present in the lives we already touch. The world doesn’t need louder ambition, it needs steadier humanity. So, as we step into what’s next, may we each find our own way of answering that simple call: to be a better human, right where we are.
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With gratitude and anticipation,
John Henderson
Founder, The Pivot Mind
