April 29, 2024
Greetings from where we’re headed,
I love stones. I love their shape and texture, the beauty in each, their history and strength. I love that they are everywhere we are. I know their potential can be mixed depending on how we take them into our lives. They can build bridges and they can build walls. They can make weapons or headstones or fireplaces and wells. It only matters what we choose.
Which leads me to an actress.
Isabella Rossellini is an actress, a world-renowned fashion model, a writer, a mother, and, it would seem, a seventy-one year old optimist. In a recent interview she said something that caught my attention and, as is my wont, I wrote it down. You won’t hear everything I write down, thankfully, but if you stay with me, a lot of it shows up. This morning it showed up.
Ms. Rossellini, in what turned out to be a surprising conversation about aging gracefully and playfully, introduced her interviewer to ethology, and eventually, to the phrase that caught my attention: “…survival of the friendliest.”
Which leads me to a scientist.
Two, in fact. I found a couple of researchers who explained this theory in words I could understand. The idea they developed is that homo sapiens survived while other species fell away because along with strength and agility, they developed reason and skills to cooperate. They not only evolved to defend themselves against death, but learned how to survive by empathy and altruism and taking care of each other for the good of all. The survival of the friendliest.
Which leads me to a rabbi.
The story comes from the writer Brian Doyle, who accumulated it his basket of experiences and then passed along to us. The rabbi tells of a group of people who were visiting Auschwitz to feel the pain there and hope and pray for better. They gathered together and held hands, and as people do, they began sway a little, and then, he said “…some began to gently dance, and then he said there rose up in that room such a powerful joy that we were stunned and speechless and confused.” How could there be dancing, how could there be joy at Auschwitz?
The rabbi said: “When we came down from the trees sixty million years ago, we were naked and slow and weak and to survive we evolved superb brains and great ferocity…and that is why we kill everything, including each other. But,” he said, “what if our moral evolution sped up now as fast as our physical and intellectual evolution has? What if this is happening to many of us already? What if this evolution sometimes feels like reasonless joy? What might our world become if this is so?”
All of human history is framed with aggression in varying degrees. Competition, disputes, wars, conquests, all with their own attached ambition, but driven by some need to overcome an opponent or a victim. Some through violence, some in more subtle ways. I wonder, if in all of this experience, if we could see any sign of this ‘moral evolution’, this acknowledgement of the survival of the friendliest. I think so. I am not qualified to make that evaluation except as a human being, and a flawed one at that, but bear with me.
In spite of the overwhelming chaos that humanity seems to rain on itself, there has been a steady march toward civilization, toward living together in cooperation. We have figured out that we do better when we figure out how to trust, to encourage, to be humble. This is not a naïve assessment of a serial optimist. Ask Google, or any organization that has created success through focused collaboration. Ask any parent. Ask anyone who has a friend that makes him laugh.
Which leads me to choices.
It might be that we are evolving still, and we can see some of those changes over generations of human existence. But we are given the ability to evolve today, this year, this lifetime. We can choose to be open, to be considerate, to be patient, to be kind and forgiving. Not every choice needs to be to defeat or to diminish or destroy. Not everything needs to be a reaction or a defense. But it takes intention, and repetition, and modeling it for our offspring.
Since the beginning of us, we have chosen what to do with the stones around us. We made weapons and we made useful things. The reason we have survived is we made more useful things, and that was possible, necessary, because we cared for each other. We were friendly.
Which leads me to my grandson.
Finley is the youngest of our family tree, so far, and perhaps the most advanced. In some ways, at nearly two, he is at his most evolved. He loves everyone, he is astonished and curious, he is kind, he is happy and primarily interested in being happy. He is at his friendliest.
As he grows, he will be taught to take care of himself, and in some places this innocence will be sanded off. But I know his parents, and I know what he will be shown, what he will be taught. He will be kind, patient, interested in others, willing to accept those that appear different than he is, more open to ideas that he didn’t already have. He will be smart, resourceful, generous, diligent, adaptable and fun. And he will be friendly.
Which leads me to this place of hope.
Hope this finds you evolving,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith