random thoughts on being human

Funny how something you’ve seen before can bring up new thoughts each time you see it. Posting the comic started one of my mental jellyfishing expeditions. The kids are still out of school, but other obligations have us back in the routine, which means less time at the table together.

“Where’s Daddy?” the 7-year-old asked sitting down with his brother and sister for an early karate-night dinner. “Why aren’t we eating together?” Wow. His observations gave new meaning to the many holiday meals we shared the past few weeks. And then jellyfish fluttered across my sea of thoughts. I grabbed my net. The first thing I caught was this comic strip. Then:

Way back when fire was new, before that even, humans learned to form communities because it made surviving easier. They bonded in the search for food. They bonded in the sharing of food. They created family.

As fire grew older and people grew smarter, traditions came to these families and then to larger communities. When they wanted to explain what they couldn’t understand they used the power of metaphors—food metaphors.

As flame became electric spark people put barriers between themselves. Houses went from common rooms to more and more rooms. Space for the individual (space between people) became increasingly important. Suburbs sprang up and we built not only walls but also fences. We no longer worked together to grow and gather food to survive, we made certain no one spoke to us while on que at the grocery store.

And now we live in this era of connection. We can reach anybody anytime. We can talk on the phone while on que rather than make small talk with the people around us. How connected are we really?

So I looked at this comic strip and saw another level—scathing sarcasm. In a time of constant connectedness we crave something more tangible than a wireless feed; something we can smell, taste, touch; something that feeds our souls. Real life … eat, pro-create, die … the humanness we share with those scantily clad hunter-gatherers hunched around the fire.

A shared meal … maybe it’s the original wireless connection.