#35 | Who Teaches You How To Be Human

A dark, rain-slick road. Headlights flash, water pools under a bridge, and a stranger glides through the flood like it’s nothing. That simple moment sparks a bigger reflection: we don’t become ourselves by sheer willpower—we learn by following people who have crossed before us.

We unpack why imitation sits at the heart of being human, from sport to spirituality. Think about how you learned to shoot a basketball: you didn’t invent footwork from scratch; you watched great players and repeated what worked. The same is true for character, courage, and prayer. Tradition isn’t a dusty archive; it’s a living current that carries tested wisdom through teachers, parents, guardians, priests, and monks. Authority, at its best, is stewardship for the sake of those who follow, not another layer of control. We talk candidly about the limits of the “be your own guru” mindset and why community keeps you honest when life turns into deep water.

From there, we turn to Theophany and the claim at the centre of Christian faith: Jesus Christ shows what it means to be fully human. He doesn’t coach from the shore; he steps into the river and makes a way. We explore how his life, teachings, and sacrifice model a path we can actually walk, and how the saints and faithful people around us—friends, coaches, elders—translate that path into daily choices. By the end, you’ll have a practical lens for choosing role models who carry the kind of weight that comes from fidelity, not flash, and a gentle push to name the people you trust as guides.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs a steady voice, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Who are you following, and how have they helped you cross the flooded places in your life?

Transcript

Greeting And Intent

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Sunny Boonani. Welcome to the Sunny Banana. I see you. Many, many blessings. Thank you everybody for tuning in today. I've got a little short message that came from an experience I had a couple of days ago. I was driving home from rugby practice. Only coach, I don't play anymore. And it was dark and we had all that rain. I came around a corner after someone flashed me, and I thought, well, why is he flashing me? So I came around the corner. There was a massive, I was under a bridge, and there was just this pool of water, massive, massive pool of water pooling there. And it was still flowing like a river. And so I backed out. I started reversing. I flashed the other people in front of me. I was like, getting out of there. Let me find another way. So I reversed into a road adjacent to that road I was in. And I saw someone coming towards. So I flashed them. And they sort of slowed down. But then when they saw the water in front, they just went. And they glided through this water. And I went, Oh, okay. And I followed. And I did the same. And it got me thinking about what a wonderful priest, Father Stephen Freeman, what a wonderful substack he has. Try find Father Stephen Freeman. I suggest his his substack and read his stuff. Beautifully written stuff. And the one of his writings, he was talking about to be human is to follow tradition. And to be human, hum humanity is traditioned. Okay. Now stay with me here. Tradition is something that we follow on from. We follow on from the past. Tradition. To be traditioned as human beings. Now, in that moment, I didn't know what to do. But I saw someone do something, and I followed, and it gave me this idea that to be human, we need someone to follow that has been human before us. Okay, so probably not so popular anymore, authority and older people. That sort of talk, the very solipsistic, egotistical self-help world that we live in, says, well, you don't need that. You don't need people to tell you what you need to do. You are you are the master, you are the boss. But it doesn't work like that, I don't think. I mean, you can disagree with me, that's fine. But I think we need other people to know how to be people. On another level, there's if you want to be a basketball player, you look to examples: Michael Jordan, Muggsy Bogues, Barkley, Larry Bird, all these names come to mind, and you watch them and you see what they do. You try to become a basketball player by learning from other basketball players. Normally your coach would have played basketball. Okay. Now, when it comes to being human, we need to also look at it in this way. We need to trust those in authority. We need to pray for those in authority and have responsibility. Our teachers, our parents, our guardians, our priests, our monks, our imams, wherever we are in our lives, and we have these people of authority. For Christians, we have an ultimate, an ultimate example of how to be human, which starts with Jesus Christ. In my church, in the Orthodox Church at the moment, we are celebrating the Etheophany, which is the baptism of Christ, exactly saying that he was human. Although he is God fully, he's also fully human, and he wanted to be baptized, he needed to be baptized. And his humanity is something very, very close to us. And through his life and through his sacrifices and through his teachers, teachings, we know how to be human. The ultimate source has become human to show us how to be. Now, don't get me wrong, not God, we don't become God, but become we become like God. And for that, we need a solid, concrete example, and that is Jesus Christ. So my question to all of us today is who is your role model? Who do you, or who are the people that you look to to be the best human or be a human? Who can we look to? Well, there's no guessing what I am pushing you, or unashamingly saying, Jesus Christ, the God man who shows us how to be, what to be. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. So yeah, that was it. That car went through. I looked. Oh, is that how you do it? And then I just followed and I got through the waters too. So let's trust those people. We have saints in the Christian world. We have apostles, prophets, and our priests, and those friends around us, as worshippers around us. A great number of people who we can look to. And I'm not saying don't be an individual, don't be yourself. But let's be honest here, we need others. And this is my whole push with uh my sunny bonana. Sunni bunani means I see you, means we see other people. We need to actually see other people. That's it. Understand what it means to be human, and that is done in person with other people in real life. So there's there's that for me today and for all of you. May God bless you where you are. Sunny Bunani. Thank you for listening to the Sunni Bunana. I see you.