“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest
number since the number one…”
- Harry Nilsson,
American Songwriter
Our species are social creatures. Regardless of our education, gender, culture, or economic status, we want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Maybe it’s a church group, a club, a professional organization, the military, or even a gang. We seek other people with similar interests to become part of a larger mission.
What do we share? What do we look for?
A few of us have artistic talents…art, sculpture, music. Even if we don't have these kinds of gifts, most of us can tell a story. We want to plant an image and feeling in our minds to another person.
The stories might be big, or little, or something common. They could be about an unexpected event, what happened during the day, a trip we took, or an unexpected meeting with someone that made an impact. Social interaction often comes through telling one another tales. The good ones move us and stick with us. They’re more than just the facts, often sprinkled with irony, humor, and verbal images that add texture. We do this to find a shared space with other human beings.
An insight (at least for me)…
I've been back in the classroom for the past few years. Early on, it was a struggle just to stay ahead of my students. But like most things we keep at, ideas and thoughts began to emerge that could not have come without the grind…meat on the bone as it were.
In this past summer’s class in anatomy & physiology (A&P) I was struck by the idea that our desire for social connection is much more organic that I appreciated. The pieces that make up the whole (anatomy), and the way the pieces interact (physiology) create the body that you and I inhabit. I say inhabit because 'we' – our consciousness, is housed in the billions of neurons in our brain. The is where 'we' live. Thinking about all of the interactions, caused me to think about the way even our physical bodies have interactive needs.
Building the house…
The job of our physical body is to take completely different systems combing them into a complex piece of physical machinery that carries our brains around. Putting stuff in our brains, builds a different kind of body, one that is equally, and possibly, more complex.
Let’s talk about the construction.
An A&P course begins with a bit of chemistry – mainly discussions of a few atoms. These tiny elements become components that build into successively larger pieces: Atoms > molecules > cells > tissue > organs > organ systems > fully integrated functioning bodies.
An atom has energy. It is made up of a nucleus with electrons buzzing around it. But atoms by themselves are pretty lonely. They are hungry to interact and bond with other atoms, some of their own kind (molecules) and others with different elements (molecular compounds).
As with the atom, however, molecules, by themselves, are meaningless unless they combine into something bigger, something with a greater purpose. Organic (and some inorganic) molecules become parts of cells.
We have trillions of cells, and while many of them look different (e.g., nervous, muscle, fat, liver, etc.), they all contain the same things. Each has little organs (organelles) that eat, drink, digest, dispose of waste, breathe, reproduce, and other things just like we do. In many ways, they are sort of like little people - microscopic people. The nucleus of the cell and its inner part, the nucleolus, carry DNA, the genetic code, like an orchestral conductor, that contains growth instructions for pretty much everything.
Like atoms and molecules, cells are drawn by a predetermined blueprint to join something greater than themselves. As they genetically differentiate, they form distinctive types of tissue (e.g., skin, muscle, lung, digestive, etc.).
That is good news, but even those tissues have a need to be part of something more too. As they grow, they clump (non-science term) together to form organs (e.g., heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.).
Now we're cooking! And yet…and yet, organs have little meaning until they interact with other organs into a working system. That working system is a coordinated body – a living creature, and in this context – us – human beings!
The epiphany for me was that from an atomic level on up, there is a genetic drive to interact with similar as well as different parts of the system. More than a metaphor, this is probably a biologic precursor for our drive to interact in shared experiences with other people - to be a part of something with greater purpose. When one group interacts with another, a social fabric begins to develop.
The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a "…wheel in the middle of a wheel…" (Eze 1:16). A wheel, or circle, has no beginning and no end. It is a metaphor for the blueprint into which we have emerged. The cycle that uses atoms as building blocks to a fully realized body is completed when the atoms return to the dust from whence they came, recycled to begin the process again. They built a house to allow our minds to seek out things greater than ourselves - a miracle!
I believe when we shed the mortal coil within which we live, we become part of something greater - primed to be a sentient part of the fabric of the universe - God's mind. Like Ezekiel’s wheel, we become part of something which has no beginning nor end.
But that’s just me…
- ted
Beautiful!
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