I Write This Strictly For The Survivors
Which includes the misfits
Strictly.
You might think you’re not one of them, but after reading this article, you might think otherwise.
I’ll start with me, as the case study, that is, before I graduated and started working.
I never thought I’d get into a course that disregards public holidays and weekends. I lived for the weekends.
Now I have to check my rota to confirm whether I’ll be in the hospital or not. I have to plan ahead and start my tomorrows today. In medicine, the health practitioners are survivors.
Social media, however, does not worship survivors. It worships those who thrive. There’s a difference.
Surviving is merely existing. Thriving, on the other hand, is existing if not with a purpose then lavishly. There’s a difference.
We’re all survivors, but some struggle more than others. The blurred lines can distance one extreme from another, making it look so different when we’re all in the same boat. Actually, it’s a ship.
It’s the biggest version of Titanic we can think of. We’re just shifting cabins and moving from one deck chair to another. And there’s music — what’s the point of knowing you’re dying if there’s no good music?
Survivors might be a common term. Misfits is a better one.
We’re all misfits. It’s just that we don’t see it.
By the time I’m done, we’ll see how we survive as misfits, some more than others.
Was born out of being broke with hope
The Rift Valley is the place where it all began.
Evidence points to this place, regarded to be the cradle of mankind.
Man, born into a world teeming with dangers at every corner, was practically and literally broke. Nothing flashy. The only thing it had was hope.
Was born out of being broke, with hope, but it don’t matter — J. Cole
Hope eventually fashioned clothes, created weapons, and utilized fire inside and outside shelters. The world is not perfectly designed to house creatures such as us. We are practically misfits in this world.
This world is owned by the microbes. The smallest of living creatures, which we dismiss whenever we discuss the history of the planet.
Scratch that, any time we discuss human history, microbes barely feature. Only the rogue ones, the kind that want to make a statement, will be remembered. The Black Plague, Spanish Flu, and recently, the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Just as humans have a few rogue entities, microbes do as well. They have been present long before we could even spell The Rift Valley. We are the misfits. We are animals living in a microbial world.
But we don’t like to think about it that way.
What we like is a reminder of how we have conquered the world with knowledge and technology. We have explored the cosmos with telescopes and space-like probes. We have gone through the sea and found other forms of energy formation besides photosynthesis.
Despite our achievements, we are still misfits. We survive. We do it in this way.
As long as this blood grows in my bone marrow
I remember once when we were called to help at the gynecology clinic.
Huge numbers were waiting in line, but the most one could do was offer advice by word of mouth. The facility did not always have the medication and the attendants did not always have the money.
That’s the healthcare situation. Most people lack health insurance. Most health facilities lack the best modes of care. Yet, diseases continue to be a menace.
But they needed help.
One patient walked in sat down and began sharing her misfortunes. She came alone because her husband would have made it difficult to divulge some pertinent aspects of her problems.
Among her cohort of friends, she was the only one who had never given birth. She desperately wanted a child. She did not use any contraceptive methods, as her religion did not allow her to do so.
They have been trying for a while but nothing.
She had a history of an ectopic pregnancy, which was surgically managed. Now she only had a single tube. Again, no use of P2 pills, but she was almost tearing up.
Her spouse did not believe her honest intention to get children. Children he also wanted. She didn’t know what to do. He believed he was fertile, but he did not know the numbers around fertility. He even thought the wife was cursed.
But infertility does not discriminate.
It was a sad story. Growing up following everything your parent and religion teaches you, and the one measure of success goes against you. You become a misfit. Worse than a survivor.
It’s difficult to reason somebody out of a belief system, regardless of the system.
Natural Selection speaks of fitness as a measure of the success of organisms. The fittest ones survive to adulthood, mate and produce viable offspring.
How neat.
Nature, however, is not neat.
Mules and hinnies exist. They are born, and can survive through to adulthood but lack the ability to produce viable offspring.
They are the most unfit as far as the theory of Natural Selection goes. They are the survivors and the most extreme of misfits.
The difference between the story of the mules and hinnies is that the lady who walked into the clinic was born to two members of the same species. Theory dictates that she should be fertile. But nature is not neat. It doesn’t read books.
Mules and hinnies are born from different species.
What does that make her? An extreme misfit?
For plants, it’s a different thing. They can cross-fertilize between different species and still manage to produce viable offspring. In the case of the radish and the cabbage, they put species theory to shame.
These two plants are of two different genera. However, they are able to breed and produce fertile offspring. Some call this hybrid — Rabbage.
I think they just look at our theories, with unseen eyes, and retort:
Rubbish!
Nature is not neat.
Survivors and misfits exist within and around us. Matter of fact, we are misfits in this microbial world.
Stretching this idea, microorganisms are misfits.
Earth has been existing for around 4 billion years.
Our earliest evidence of the possibility of life is around 3.5 billion years. Using light microscopes, our simplest portals into the microcosms, we get to see the life of our microscopic survivors.
These single-celled creatures have been alive for that long and will continue to exist long after we’ve become extinct. But they have had it rough. Warfare is common in the microbial world.
We, too, fight them. If one of the bacteria finds its way inside your nasal cavity, you will either sneeze, cough it out, or dose yourself with antibiotics.
That is, if it causes a lot of discomfort.
In spite of it all, microbes are survivors. A good number of them, are misfits, so much that they always want to detect if it’s people are around. They do this through the process of quorum sensing.
More often than not, a bacterium would not find its people. It would be solitary. Solo.
But when it finds its own people, it lights up in excitement. Some produce bioluminescence while others start wreaking havoc through biofilms. Bacteria are misfits.
So are viruses, parasites, and fungi.
We’re all just misfits trying to fit in. So far, we have succeeded. But I have developed a theory to defend the misfits even more. I call it the theory of Organismal Selection.
I can only pray that one day you’ll read into it
I write daily.
Tired or not, I have to write. Busy or not, I have to write. With a laptop or not, I still write.
J. Cole says:
And I feed into it
I’d rather make tracks where I bleed into it
The single’s only the look, to sell these niggas the book
I can only pray that one day you’ll read into it
What I say is:
I’d rather write articles where I bleed into it.
Daily, through writing, I bleed. I bleed my ideas, my stories, and my dreams.
The aim is to improve the clarity of my thinking process. This is essential now that I have a theory to defend.
The coarse-grained theory of Organismal Selection states:
Existence and probability are sufficient to explain evolution.
Neat. Theories can be neat and have astounding reach. Basically, they can explain a lot.
Neat explanations are essential because they limit the degree of variation or changes that can be made in a theory. A theory that explains everything is a theory that explains nothing.
So you do want a neat theory.
I think I have a neat theory, but love can be blind. I love this theory because it includes misfits and talks about survivors.
It includes the lady who walked into that clinic on that day and the microbes that have been living for over 3 billion years. What’s more, it includes atoms, molecules, and other systems I have yet to write about.
Existence is the first thing. Physical existence. Once this is confirmed, we can use probability to explain its predisposition.
What the theory predicts is organisms, through physical existence, will seek all forms of mergers in their power, to survive. To continue existing. To avoid death.
By this measure, my theory talks about the lady who wants to get children desperately, the mules and hinnies, and the plants that defy so many biological concepts.
For microbes, they have to maintain a membrane around them to select what goes in and what goes out. Membranes don’t form spontaneously as we might think.
Mammals try to avoid death through social relationships, what I call mergers. Some, who are assured of no offspring, still continue to do that. Why do you think your grandmother or grandfather is alive, if they are alive?
Social spiders provide this form of parental care. Alloparenting is seen in a small percentage of living organisms, around 3–5%. A stubborn statistic to remind biologists that nature is not neat.
The theory of Organismal Selection is a theory of all of us. It’s a theory of survivors and misfits.
I’d rather write every day, to stand by an idea I strongly believe in, and like J. Cole, I can only hope that one day you’ll read into it.
Gather my thoughts sharp as a bow and arrow
Daily, I’ll gather my thoughts to share my ideas with you. The more I share, the clearer it gets. The more I write, the clearer my thinking.
In a fast-paced world, I can only spare a few minutes of your time to talk about your present state. Of your current status as a survivor or a misfit, wherever you are.
I am a misfit. You are a misfit. When we create mergers, we become survivors.
When our survivorship periods extend for a good long time, we consider ourselves thriving despite our misfit status.
In a universe bent on annihilating us, we struggle to avoid this eventual death. We struggle to remain alive on our Titanic.
We’re all together in the same boat.
We’re all together in the same boat I know you, you know me
Baby, you know me — Amber Coffman
