Animal Nature
“We are first and foremost animals, sharing more in common than not with our animal relatives.
More than anything we long to experience and explore our animal nature … to luxuriate in the freedom of it … like a cat stretching fully, lying in a puddle of sun, confident that her next meal will soon wander by unbidden.”
There’s a joke of sorts that the comedian C.K. Louis tells (I think … but someone will correct me if it’s someone else …). The gist of the joke is that G-d is talking to him and they get into a discussion of why he has to work. He says something like, “I have to work to earn money.” G-d asks him, “Why … what do you need money for?” The response that follows is predictable, “Well to buy stuff … like food to feed my family.”
At this point G-d freaks out … basically yelling, “What do you mean you have to work to earn money to buy food???!!!??? I left it on the ground for you!!!”
This is the reality we live in when we allow ourselves to experience it that way … the food is basically laying on the ground waiting for us to pick it up. Maybe, if we want meat, we have to hunt or fish to get it … but it’s still there waiting for us to grab it when it comes by.
I know that most folks aren’t living this lifestyle, hunter/gatherer, and neither do I … I’m imagining that anyone reading this post on a blog isn’t a hunter/gatherer by trade … call me crazy!
What remains though are two aspects that we need to take into account if we want to live the life that’s available to us as our birthright …
Essential Human Nature
The first point is that we are indeed suited biologically to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Hell, the emergence and popularity of “Cross-Fit” training speaks to the appeal (and value) of functional fitness. This is exactly what a hunter/gatherer lifestyle would provide by virtue of “picking up the food lying around” and/or doing what it takes to find it, carry it and prepare it. The same would be true of the activities required for native, primative hunting … natural cross-fit training.
I remember loving training scenes inthe Rocky movie where Slyvester Stallone fights Dolph Lundgren, i.e.: Ivan Drago (I think it was Rocky #207).
Drago is training under the most sophisticated regimen imaginable … with super advanced equipment, monitoring and scientists at his beck and call. The results are impressive. At one point he punches a pressure pad and the power is off the scales!
Then we have the scenes where Rocky is training (in the film the fight is to take place in Russia, and Rocky is give a dacha in the woods to do his training … in the heart of winter). Rocky is chopping wood, pulling sleds, carrying logs, running through knee deep snow … “cross-fit functional training … and the movement replicates anything Drago can accomplish with all his fancy equipment. Of course Rocky gets as fit and strong as Drago … and the rest is history as they say.
The second thing we want to account for is that we are ideally suited to life in this world, in this Universe. The Universe spawned us, and then we began shaping the world, and shaping ourselves (the human species … from homo sapiens to homo sapiens sapiens).
We can still organize ourselves to operate in a “natural” way, such that life comes to us and provides us for what we need and want. To live this way we’d need to learn how to notice for the opportunities that are available to us, and to be prepared to take advantage of the ones that show up. What I call noticing for the “Signals in the System.”
We would also have to begin to let go … we’d need to allow ourselves to accept what shows up and move along the path of least resistance. This is not lollygagging. We still need to organize and focus on acting to maximize the opportunities that show up for us.
A cat does not lay in the sun where it’s unlikely to find suitable prey when it’s hungry, nor does it lay in such a way that the food it’s seeking avoids it. A cat knows better … it doesn’t feel entitled to eat … it works for it.
A cat begins by learning the basic rules of hunting (and hunger) from it’s time as a kitten under the direction of it’s mother. When it makes mistakes it gets wacked and goes hungry. Unlike the players under Mike Rice who weren’t supposed to be “abused” verbally and physically by the 44 year old coach … who didn’t walk off when he did these things by the way. The kitten is tougher … and probably smarter too.
So life shows up and teaches us if we let it … and when we let it we get stronger and smarter as a result (see: “Anti-Fragile” by Nassim Taleb). This is true for everyone, applicable for anyone who is an employer or employee (see: “Political Savvy” by Joel R. DeLuca), and especially true for entrepreneurs (see anything by Seth Godin, e.g.: “Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?” or “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell.
Resetting the System
HOWEVER …
“Most folks are too scared and set in their ways to remain open to what life is offering them … they always begin from something, hoping to get to something, acting so they can get something … and most of the time they are disappointed when they get it, or too busy running off to the next thing to appreciate what they have … so instead of getting what’s available, experiencing the magic and magnificence of being alive and fully human, they settle for what’s familiar and comfortable.”
There’s really a deep lesson here … beyond cognitive dissonance, which is surely present … or cognitive inertia, which is also at play.
If you’re always beginning from SOMETHING … you never get to experience the freedom and joy contained in NOTHING.
It’s been an argument of mine for a long time now that in order to get/have the life that is waiting for us we have to give up the one we have (not my quote BTW … I got this one from Joseph Campbell … try: “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living” by Diane Osbon (Editor) – and get the hardcover edition, with the ribbon and beautiful torn edge pages.) You have to get to NOTHING to become free of what constrains you, limits you and you think IS you (HINT: that’s NOT you).
What’s fantastic … is that under the veneer of SOMETHING … you’ll expose NOTHING, and find your Animal Nature … waiting patiently (all animals know how to wait patiently … even when they are actively waiting).
Your Animal Nature only knows NOTHING. Therefore when you are in touch with your Animal Nature you’ll be ready and able to do anything.
From NOTHING, there’s literally nothing in your way … nothing stopping you … nothing you have to fix, get over or make better.
From NOTHING everything is just pure learning … and the next NOTHING begins from an entirely different place … maybe another Universe entirely … with another you waiting for you to find out who you are … patiently waiting … vaya con Dios.
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Professional Certification Training
Langebaek, Denmark 29 July – 9 August
(You just might get NOTHING … if you pay attention, keep your sole in the room, and you’re lucky …)
