To feel something deeply is to “feel it in one’s bones”. Feeling something in your bones is like walking into your childhood bedroom. It reminds you of something. It brings you back to a half-remembered beginning. A bone-deep feeling is a bridge to the truth. How interesting it is we say it that way!
Besides holding up our skin, bones follow a pastry shop credo, the good stuff is on the inside. Sourceful and spongy, bone marrow exists seemingly injected into our divine scaffolding.
Bones protect marrow. Marrow house stem cells. Stem cells produce cells. Cells hold DNA. DNA contain genes. Genes make life. Life is evolution. Evolution is survival. Survival means struggle.
The tutelage of hardship feels so truthful because it reminds us, to live is to struggle. For proof, simply look in the mirror.
Our bodies instinctively adapt to environment. The knowledge of what it feels like to live through global pandemic is now eternally stored in our bones. We don’t actually have to try much. It’s already happening. What a relief!
This knowledge is better known as experience. The collection of experience is called history. And history is the best teacher. Our skeletal scholars are jotting down potential test answers into our genetic notebooks, whether we know it or not. These bodily notes form patterns, which turn into habits, which make up behavior.
In his TEDx Talk, Dr. John Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist, describes patterns that are hardwired into us. Hunger, thirst and pain are what Dr. Cacioppo calls aversive signals (things we feel that tell us to act). The body has developed these “early warning systems” to motivate survival.
An overlooked early warning signal, according to Dr. Cacioppo’s research, is loneliness. Pain is motivation for our physical bodies to act. Loneliness is motivation for our social bodies to act. And yet, this biological mechanism has been stigmatized into a moral failure. Nothing is wrong with needing to belong, in fact, it’s perfectly healthy, and perfectly human.
In her interview on the On Being podcast, Dr. Brené Brown suggests a side to loneliness that rung true in my bones.
“What if loneliness is driven, often, by changing who we are, being perfect, saying what we’re supposed to say, doing what we’re supposed to do… What if loneliness is driven, in part, by our lack of authenticity?… Your level of true belonging can never be greater than your willingness to be brave and stand by yourself. “
Dealing with the COVID-19 virus has forced loneliness upon us. Unfortunately, no amount of Zoom calls, or social media, can replicate the human touch. But, maybe we can be more authentic with ourselves by disrupting well worn avoidance patterns in favor of facing hard truths.
Surfacing too quickly from pain can cause the emotional bends. (I didn’t come up with that term, but I forget where I saw it. It’s perfect.) I wonder how much of the call to optimize quarantine life is driven by a need for control? Life has to go on, I get that. And I’m not suggesting we dwell in it. But if we’re using production as a means to catapult ourselves out of pain, what are we really learning?
Two snippets from the Unlocking Us podcast with grief expert, David Kessler, speak to this.
If you don’t feel it, you can’t heal it.
Meaning does not get rid of pain, it provides a cushion that you didn’t know was there before.
“We’ll get through this” has become a familiar refrain. I’ve heard it mostly in reference to the stock market. “Believing stocks will rebound is a bet on the human spirit.” Essentially, “we’ll get through this” means, we believe enough people will act in response to collective loneliness and pain.
Dr. Cacioppo continues:
“our evolutionary advantage is our brain and our ability to communicate, plan, reason, and work together. Social species by definition create emergent structures that extend beyond an organism. Structures that range from couples and families, to schools, to nations, and cultures. These structures evolved hand in hand with neural, hormonal, and genetic mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behavior helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and leave a legacy.”
The human spirit involves the camaraderie of coming together when facing collective struggle. But it also involves honoring the motivation for that communion, pain and loneliness.
The spirit involves the shadow. The human shadow has a dark, usually negative connotation. But we need our shadow as much as we need our spirit. Together they offer reference. Orienting us to the wholeness of true belonging.
Betting on the human spirit is a bet against loneliness. It’s a bet that highlights the usefulness of pain. It’s a bet on our continued usage of that pain for survival. It’s a bet that we’ll forego avoidance in favor of authenticity. It’s a bet that we’ll feel things in our bones and act accordingly.
Betting on the human spirit is a bet on embodied mechanisms that have developed across millennia through endless struggle. It’s a bet on the manifestations of togetherness: commerce, medicine, culture, and, most importantly, love.