Byron's Babbles

I didn’t plan it this way, but I am pretty pumped that it worked out that I am writing my 29th post of 2024 on Leap Day. I won’t be able to do that again until 2028. As I thought about 2028 I began thinking about projects I’ve got going, people I am working with, relationships I’m building, and lots of other things like people I want to meet and have conversations with. Really, though, most of my thoughts revolved around people. This made me think of something I heard someone say earlier this week, “No human lives on an island.” So true! No one is entirely self-sufficient and independent. We humans are social beings who rely on, and are connected to, others in order to thrive and survive. It’s a “symptom of being human.” I love the metaphor of an island. Just as an island is surrounded by water and connected to other land masses, humans are surrounded by a network of relationships and cannot exist in isolation.

“…you and I together are much, much more than one plus one. We are as many as we are able to be, and less and more.” ~ Nora Bateson, Small Arcs of Larger Circles

C. S. Lewis told us in God in the Dock that, “It is a law of the natural universe that no being can exist on its own resources. Everyone, everything, is hopelessly indebted to everyone and everything else” (Lewis, p. 85). Here, Lewis was highlighting the interconnectedness of all beings, including human beings. He was emphasizing that no being can survive solely on its own resources, and that we are all dependent on each other in some way. This idea reflects the concept of interdependence and the importance of relationships in our lives.

We are all participants in this world whether we want to be or not. As Nora Bateson told us in Small Arcs of Larger Circles, “To be a participant in a complex system is to desire to be both lost and found in the interrelationships between people, nature, and ideas” (Bateson, location 142 in Kindle). Note here the reminder that we are all participants in a complex system. Another favorite lesson of mine from Nora’s book is about cereal. She said, “The determination of something as simple as the quality of breakfast cereal is a complex idea that carries along in its wake a long string of influences ranging from developments in agriculture to physical labor and politics, to social demographics and eventually to the place we call taste… but it is just an idea made of other ideas, in a living world of ideas all pushing and pulling each other. They don’t sit still” (Bateson, location 198 in Kindle). We do all live in a world where we are pushing and pulling each other and push and pull spans the globe. Everything is ever-changing and we must remember to grow and evolve with those changes.