My grandson is a water hound, and that fact plus his third birthday put us last weekend at one of those modern waterparks owned by a conglomerate on the New York Stock Exchange that features hair-raising water slides, wave pools, massive downpouring fountains and godawful unhealthy food at exorbitant prices. It’s a decidedly middle America, working class, family entertainment vibe, which today means plentiful diversity not only of ethnic groups but also body types and aesthetic sensibilities.
Suffice to say no one would mistake it for the starting line at the Ironman Triathlon.
Why is it, then, that the more I stare with true intention into faces at these kinds of gatherings or others at coffee shops, stadiums, and airports (when I’m not rushing to catch a flight!), the more I feel my heart expanding as I consider all it has taken over billions of years to have this utterly unique representative of the human species in front of me in this moment?
Not every human will be our cup of tea, but then not every cup of tea is top-ranked from artisan producers and suited to our preferred taste profiles, either.
While there are certain personalities and body types that have us beholding a person who reminds us or even seems a doppelgänger of someone else we know, the prevailing appreciation anytime I’m in a crowd and in observational mode is how gloriously themselves every last person is, no exceptions.
Scientists tell us we share 99.9% of our genes with all our human brothers and sisters (and even 60%% with the lowly fruit fly).
There’s plenty good reason to ponder that fact for humanitarian, political and religious reasons, but here on the ground with my fellow waterpark cavorters, I’m far more struck—at least initially—with the differences between us.
These differences are born of the completely unique experiences and countless variables that come into play in the course of a human life, none of which can be remotely identical with any other human. Similar in various cases and ways, yes, but never, ever the same.
The making, upbringing, and actual lived life of a human being is a wonder unto itself, and that wonder is tucked into and reflected in every person I encounter in the seemingly endless stream of faces passing by on this and most every day when I emerge from my cave.
Truly, we are at one level mere ping-pong balls, being shot out in great profusion from a grand celestial cannon and bounced around under an illusion of control, shaped through all our lives in utterly unique ways by the variables of genes, birth order, the people we meet and places we go, the books we read and don’t read, the heroes we adopt, the parenting we get (or don’t get, or get inconsistently), the teachers, mentors and peers, the antagonists and accidents that float in and out of our lives, all of it intermingling with the mental and emotional and physical space we occupy at the moment we encounter them.
And let us not forget the forks in the road, the ones we take, the ones we don’t take, and the ones we back ourselves away from.
It’s a dazzling array, guaranteed to make for a beautiful, irreplicable—if also uniquely neurotic, of course—you. Yet when I look at these faces and bodies passing by, the souls they reveal and are, the pain they bear, the armor they wear, it makes me feel wholly aligned with the 99.9% of DNA I share with them—and absolutely enraptured by the dearness of that other 0.1%.
Yes, that is a decidedly romantic view, and reality would and does intrude. There are times when enough is enough and “Hell is other people,” in philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre’s memorable phrase.
Not every human will be our cup of tea, but then not every cup of tea is top-ranked from artisan producers and suited to our preferred taste profiles, either. That is not the point of the massive amount of elbow-rubbing we engage in with our fellow humans in the blip of time we are afforded on this sphere.
The point is to do what we can to love “all God’s creatures” in that big, bodacious way of taking the world into ourselves and declaring it good (even in the worst of times, and perhaps especially in the worst of times).
And then to take special care in treating the special, particular loves of our daily lives with the veneration they need and deserve. To see (appreciate, accept, forgive, embrace, honor, enjoy) them, thus opening the door to being seen in return.
***
MY LOVE FOR ALL THINGS WARM AND BREATHING
By William Kloefkorn
I have seldom loved more than one thing at a time,
yet this morning I feel myself expanding, each
part of me soft and glandular, and under my skin
is. room enough now for the loving of many things,
and all of them at once, these students especially,
not only the girl in the yellow sweater, whose
name, Laura Buxton, is somehow the girl herself,
Laura for the coy green mellowing eyes, Buxton
for all the rest, but also the simple girl in blue
on the back row, her mouth sad beyond all reasonable
inducements, and the boy with the weight problem,
his teeth at work even now on his lower lip, and
the grand profusion of hair and nails and hands and
legs and tongues and thighs and fingertips and
wrists and throats, yes, of throats especially,
throats through which passes the breath that joins
the air that enters through these ancient windows,
that exits, that takes with it my own breath, inside
this room just now my love for all things warm and
breathing, that lifts it high to scatter it fine and
enormous into the trees and the grass, into the heat
beneath the earth beneath the stone, into the
boundless lust of all things bound but gathering.
—From the volume, “Cottonwood County” (1980)
***
This song stands as a plea to reach out and into the life of the old and lonely, but it reverberates as a way of living and seeing and existing for everyone, everywhere…
***
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Let’s do the math here. 99.9% of humanity share identical genetic makeup. That great a percentage tends to create a kind of spooky similarity which I’ll call the “Doppelgänger Nascent Abnormality or DNA. We can then assume the .01%, though minute, is the major key in our divergent composition, speaking metaphorically from a symphonic perspective. From there, I will hypothesize our protoplasm (.01%) consists entirely of nurturing “stuff.” This ultimately finds us on the doorstep of the fruit fly (I prefer calling the fruit ply drosophila because the Latin gives it greater scientific heft). If 60% of our DNA lines up with the drosophila, and we can’t fly, my theory is this: The differentiation among homo sapiens is so minute, there’s still hope for those who aren’t as enlightened as I (I, being the ideal). My corollary is that with 40% greater emphasis on Bernoulli’s principle we can bankrupt the airline business. Finally, I’ll leave you with a nugget of wisdom from Margaret Mead—“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everybody else.”
Not gonna argue with any of that math, Professor Spencer—yours seems airtight!
Lovely post, Drew. Love is reflected in love — it’s the power behind the Golden Rule, and sorely needed right now!
Seems to be an age-old battle, Susan, a handful of universal themes written in a million different stories. The Golden Rule recalls that old maxim: Simple, not easy. If it were, we wouldn’t be in thr pickle we’re in. Always good to hear from you, be well!
Yes, so many true ideas are simple, but not easy!
That’s one of my favorite John Prine songs. Especially his inspiration from delivering newspapers in a home for elderly folks when he was a young man.
Thanks, Cathy, it’s one of my faves, too, though it is a tough competition! I highlighted a number of other “candidates” here in the aftermath of his passing from covid, the first person I “knew” who died from it, very early in the pandemic.
https://andrewhidas.com/mainline-to-the-heart-a-john-prine-homage/
Last night I was gratified when a neighbor and I met up on the street and she beamed, “Thanks for reminding me how much I love John Prine!” Is “love” perhaps too strong a word to use about a “stranger” whom one has never met? I don’t think so…
The 99.9% shared genetic makeup is a wonderful reminder as we live in such stridently divided times. I have taken on what has turned into a very difficult personal challenge in attempts to soften my otherwise hostile, hateful feelings for those who express support for our current president ( especially those supporters who I know ). My disgust and despair, coupled with absolute confusion knows no bounds for otherwise decent people who cannot bring themselves to denounce the destruction wrought by this madman. And yet, we know one another; and we share 99.9% genetic makeup! What the hell happened? Were we socialized, parented, mentored, educated so differently that we could see the world as if we were aliens from different worlds? Mind boggling. As to your observations from the waterpark and all other large public mixes, I often reflect on the iconic Star Wars bar scene and imagine different creature-looks for some of the masses that otherwise appear to look and act like human incarnations.
“What the hell happened?” indeed, Jay! The question begets a chuckle in me, so altogether confounding it is. Since it’s the business of the social psychologists to examine those questions from the distance their discipline requires, I think they’ve got a good handle on it, not least because they’ve seen and studied it so often through history. It’s a kind of mass delusion that can take hold in a population and hang on with all the tenacity of a cornered animal. Cognitive dissonance as a kind of negative superpower. Though the delusion seems to be holding fairly steady, the madness of our would-be king appears to be showing through all the more clearly each day, so perhaps someday, hard to say when, a reckoning will be at hand, and the implosion will occur. Meanwhile, we look on in dismay, do what we can to resist and keep our bearings, and recognize that all the same potential delusion lies within us, given the crazy, around-the-bend loons all humans can be on occasion. (Not you and I, of course….) :-)
Andrew, thanks, as usual, for getting this tired brain churning. Seems the basic premise of this post – we are so alike and yet each of us unique – is a lovely example of something I appreciate the older I get. There is so much more in life that is “both… and” than there is “either… or.” Everything from the glories AND cruelty of nature to the benefits AND shortcomings of democracy. Makes things a lot more complicated but sure yields a richer appreciation and experience of this messy (AND wondrous) life.
Yes, David, binaries strike me as the lazy person’s refuge, the abandonment of texture, nuance, humility, deep inquiry. It doesn’t mean that all knowledge and truth is relative and therefore all is permitted—only that we work a lot harder to get at it, and that we appreciate how elusive, conditional and many-sided it can be.