The metaphorical nature of our body

WE ARE NOT LIKE NATURE. WE ARE NATURE.

I found this really, really, really, really old picture of you :)

Have you ever seen the listicles, or carousels on social media detailing all the ways in which we are similar to Nature?  The bronchi in our lungs branching like trees! Our blood vessels running like rivers! The matrices in our bones mirroring the vast webs of solar systems!

The poetics of these images illustrate a metaphorical truth. Not only do we find visual resemblance in these examples from the natural world - curiously, they give us a clue to the ways in which the similarity manifests.

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left: trees absorb carbon dioxide, which is byproduct of human respiration and in turn release oxygen

right: branching passageways called "bronchioles" in human lungs Trees produce oxygen, which is absorbed by our lungs.

left: the Columbia River delta right: unspecified branching blood vessels. Blood is comprised of approximately 80% water There is a fixed amount of water on Earth.  The water coursing through our vessels was once also flowing in a river.

left: the Crab nebula as photographed by the James Webb telescope

right: trabeculae are thin, interconnected, rod or plate-like structures that form the spongy interior of bones

Calcium is forged in stars. After the Big Bang, it found its way into Earth, into the food chain - and eventually, into our bones.

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The genesis of the metaphors “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.” Carl Sagan, American astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator

4.5 billion years ago, the Big Bang created the very carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our bodies and the bodies of every other animal (as well as most of the matter) on Earth.  Calcium and carbon were birthed by the death of a star before the earth was even conceived.  So Carl Sagan was not being hyperbolic... inside our bones is a starfield of calcium, a residue of stellar demise.

After Earth was born, she boiled like a witch’s stewpot. Eventually, the simmering created the necessary conditions for life to emerge. Life’s name, in this case, was LUCA — the Last Universal Common Ancestor.  LUCA is believed to be the single-celled organism from which all life on Earth evolved.

Every tree, every animal, every human shares this ancient origin story.

Just after this split, a specific photosynthesizing animal called cyanobacteria, began to produce significant amounts of oxygen, leading to a gradual increase in atmospheric oxygen levels.  This shift to a more hospitable atmosphere meant that sea-dwelling creatures could emerge and begin their evolutionary journey on land. Without plant-life we would have never evolved.

And so a different picture begins to emerge...

We are not like Nature. 

Not metaphor. Not coincidence. A mirror.

We are Nature. 

Inextricably linked, woven into the great web of interbeing; a part of, not apart from.

At first, the metaphors are a helpful means of transportation - a bridge for our imaginations, connecting our bodies to Earth, Sky, Rivers.

But the closer we look, the more that bridge disappears. There is no separation.

We are already on the other side. Try this simple somatic inquiry to reconnect with your ancient More Than Human ancestors: Give yourself a gentle hug and feel your bones, made strong by stars.

Breathe deep into your lungs - the spaciousness gifted by trees.

Find your pulse and let it remind you: you are primordial water in motion.

And now, billions of years later, here we are - sentient interstellar dust, scrolling endlessly, biohacking our way into the metaverse, asking Chat GPT for the meaning of life.

We map the stars and forget we are made of them.

When we zoom out and take the broader perspective, the view becomes so vast that humans are but a speck in a persistent and awe inspiring saga much, much bigger than ourselves - it can feel kinda lonely, a little purposeless or insignificant.  Until we remember that we are, in the words of our old friend Carl Sagan "a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us.”

It feels far less lonely when we remember we are threads in the boundless and boundary-less tapestry of space. And as you begin to appreciate your True Nature, perhaps you would like to consider... if our bones are made of stardust, and our blood remembers rivers, then who - or what - are we really?