What Were We Built For?
The winding path of meaning and belonging
She could stare forever. She could sleep forever. The emptiness was so big sometimes, like the great plains, tumbleweeds tossed in its dusty expanse of nothing. Exploring this requires the courage of a space traveler, she thought. Lonely and bored, some moments of awe, a lot of discomfort.
“We are just an energy system that falls apart at death,” her teacher said. All of these other machinations are only the story? The mind gluing a self together, endlessly wanting a port to dock in. She felt something almost unwind for a moment. Then the mind marched through to the new plan to understand it all.
- There is the content of the thoughts
- There is how we are relating to the thoughts
- All thoughts are a cover for feelings
- The body has no story
Oh, the body has no story. Softening.
She was feeling anxious about all the fish swimming day and night, searching for food in the ocean desert. Then her walking companion said, “The fish are not thinking about having to swim all day. They were designed for this.” Her whole being shifted.
The haunting separation, the birthplace of fear.
She asked curious and hoping, “What were we built for?” The question floated in the almost spring air, across late afternoon shadows and into the sleeping buds of the cherry trees.
They mused without direction. The walk was coming to a close.
Some say we are social animals — we were built for love. She had heard others say that we are meaning-making machines. But for the exalted writings of those that had come before, she couldn’t help thinking that these questions could be a modern problem, a luxury even.
It was time for a hard day’s work, for giving, for the tiredness of a body in use, for the satisfaction of something built by hand, for a sunset that quiets all, for moonless stargazing to remind her, bathed in speckled light, that she is a small part of everything.
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