Writers Jam

Billions of years ago, two free-living organisms gave up a part of their genomes to come together to survive. They developed the first social contract to produce what the other needed and protect the other at the cost of being dependent. They subsumed themselves in each other, becoming one entity that would be better than the sum of their parts.

The mitochondrial DNA is the only component in the cell that traces its origins to some other living being, something that's not us. A result of the same contract between two organisms who traded out autonomy for shelter or energy.

We are born alone and we die alone. The time in between is kept busy in trying to keep ourselves free of pain. Somehow in the midst of it all, we discovered that maybe we don't have to do that alone as well.

Simplistically put, a body is nothing but trillions of cells that decided to cooperate to keep most of each other alive. Each cell sacrifices something, contributes something, and receives something as a result of choosing to brave life in a community rather than as a unicellular organism.

First markers for a civilization are highly controversial and contested. Burial mounds, record keeping, jewellery fashioned out of bone, toys for babies, healed femurs. No single person would have been skilled enough to sustain such needs of their living unit solely by themselves. Therefore the basic criteria to achieve "society" in such conditions is division of labour. The beginnings of an understanding between individuals to help each other out emerging in the shadows of a campfire.

The cost of living in civilization has always been about the cost of love. A means to increase our chance of survival by ensuring that we live in an abundance of helpful individuals around us. This serves a specific evolutionary niche to help enable species to proliferate more than necessary. Appreciation for our allies extends the self beyond the Self to encompass parties who are in oour own fray.

Love is a choice. It’s an activity that one chooses to pursue everyday. If love were a feeling as intangible as the poets would put it, there’d be no respite for a heart. It is the combination of self-preservation combined with “concern for the spiritual growth of another”. Though affection may be faulted for arising out of selfish origins, it is never solely for the self. Care binds together people, communities, and species to make way for a better tomorrow. It takes from us and gives it back to us multi-fold for the small price of caring to do so.

In choosing to love, we become a part of something bigger than ourselves. We become entrenched in the myriad of ways it has permeated our history. We become the blueprint for what cooperation might look like aeons down the line. Through this we begin to understand and acknowledge what it is to be alive. We transcend survival and establish our life as a presence in whatever meagre time we have on Earth. We begin existence anew as mutually obligated organisms. Love spins us, unaffected specks drifting in the ether into interconnected patterns in the fabric of reality.