HumanTide 2024!

HumanTide 2024 was a big success! HumanTide is a holiday for celebrating all humans, with an emphasis on extending gratitude and goodwill to strangers. This past Friday my partners and I gave away flowers (with little flyers affixed to each) at Cal Anderson Park in honor of the 2nd annual HumanTide. The flyer shared some news highlights about good things that humans did in the past year. There’s some seriously exciting stuff in this list! I’ll share the full flyer text at the end of this post.

For me it felt like we got a great response, better than last year, and it was really heartening. Part of that may have been that we were able to apply some lessons learned from the previous HumanTide. Last year there were a fair number of folks who didn’t want a flower, and I got the feeling they thought it was a scam or that we were trying to sell the flowers. This time I made a sign for our flower bucket to let people know that this was not a scam nor a religious thing! I wasn’t sure how that would go over but it seemed like a lot of people understood + believed us. There were still some folks who didn’t want one but even with those folks the vibe felt more chill and friendly to me somehow.

Sam had completely lost their voice from a recent illness but still managed to give away several flowers on their own using nothing but gesturing and pointing to the bucket sign. That was so impressive to me and extra heartwarming.

One of the most best moments was when I explained the meaning of HumanTide to two folks sitting on the grass and one of them said “Wow, if only we could be that way to each other every day!”.

All in all we gave away 43 flowers+flyers, and got through them pretty quickly! It was such a gorgeous day and there were a lot of people out and seemingly in a good mood.

We ended our adventure at the playground area and the last two flowers I gave away were pretty magical - to a parent, and their kid, who seemed to be four or five years old. When I held out a pink carnation the kid came running toward me with a big smile on their face, eyes locked on the flower, and gleefully took it from my hand. It was so cute ; __ ; as we were leaving the park I heard the parent opening the flyer and starting to read through it with their kid. What a cool family.

This moment really stuck with me. I started thinking about what it would have felt like for me if I had had an experience like that as a small child. My family was pretty socially isolated when I was a kid and there was a lot of focus on being wary of “stranger danger”. I deeply internalized that attitude and kept it with me into adulthood. In my mid-20s I began to realize that I was still carrying a fear of strangers that was designed to protect a small child, but was pretty weird and counter-productive for an adult to have. My parents taught me how to protect myself but not how to transition into a healthier balance of wariness and openness that’s more appropriate for an adult. I’m doing that now though! HumanTide has been a great practice for that.

Happy HumanTide, y’all!

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Here’s the flyer text:

Hey! Hello! It’s 2024. How are you holding up? This is such a crazy time to be alive, and such an easy time to feel misanthropic. But while there’s a lot of hate and fear going around, there are a lot of people fighting really hard to help each other too, and I think it’s important to keep the victories in our sights.  Below are a few good things our species did this past year.

After almost 20 years of negotiations, the United Nations signed a treaty to protect marine life in international waters, which make up about two thirds
of the world’s oceans.

Over 3.8 million Americans were approved for student loan forgiveness,
totaling almost $138 billion in debt relief. 

Responding to pressure from activists, the Danaher Corporation lowered
the price of their standard tuberculosis test cartridge by 20% and committed to zero-profit pricing in their distribution of the tests to impoverished communities.

Illinois became the first state in the US to abolish cash bail by passing the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act.

An AI-powered forecasting tool helped warn thousands of people in Chile to evacuate before a catastrophic flood reached their homes.

Lego launched its Play with Braille Lego set. The toy bricks feature modified studs that correspond to numbers and letters in the braille code and help kids learn braille while they play.

The City of Seattle launched the CARE department, a team of unarmed behavioral health specialists who can be dispatched to public health and safety incidents via a 911 call as an alternative to police involvement.

I’m so proud of us and I believe that we are building a better world. Please keep up the good fight! You, and we, are truly amazing. Thanks for being you. Thanks for being here. Happy HumanTide!

–Cora (founder of HumanTide)

#HappyHumanTide on Instagram to learn more