Human, Bigger than the Sum of the Parts.
A couple of years ago I wrote the following quote, which picked a little momentum.
‘We are never more awake and alive than when we experience our world through our five senses. And when we are aware of them separately, they recombine to become vastly bigger than the sum of their parts’.
Ultimately, that statement forms part of the introduction to our 5 Senses Experiences. We discuss how there is something bigger and intangible, that we need to be able to function. It’s continual, ever present and sustaining. We can’t touch it, feel it, measure it or quantify it in any way. But we know it’s there, for example something makes our brain work, which makes our heart pump blood and our lungs work so that we can breathe.
It’s automatic and amazing and wonderful. We don’t appreciate it, at all. If we didn’t have it we’d have to remember to do all those automatic things that it does for us. Can you imagine what it would be like if we had to remember to breathe? Sleep would be out for a start. Some may say, ‘Oh, it’s the brain that does all that’, but that can’t be the case because when we die, we still have a brain, but we don’t do any of those things. In fact, without that something, we don’t do anything at all, well, except decompose.
That is staggering, and unless we stop, and think about it, we take it for granted. The most amazing gift we could ever have. Or quite possibly, could ever need.
It reminds us when we are hungry, stops us when we are full (generally), lets us know when we need to sleep, wakes us up (if the alarm doesn’t), lets us think, or decide not to think, yes, it is possible! Runs our whole body for us, and as humans we also have the gifts of memory, perception, imagination, reason and intuition, to name a few.
Some call it soul, spirit, God, by all the names we have for him (or her), universe, or whatever. Something makes us the living sentient beings that we undoubtedly are. What it is, or maybe is we will quite possibly never know, but provides us with endless opportunity for endless discussion; I hope.
It was whilst watching the film, Above the Shadows’, that I began thinking about this concept a little further.
The plot centres around a young woman who has become invisible to the world and a cage fighter who has made some poor decisions and lost his way in the world. The cage fighter is the only person who can see the girl, the plot revolves around the girl becoming visible and the fighter regaining his belief in himself. It’s a pretty cool film to be fair.
What occurred to me was the possibility that there are souls everywhere. That’s absolutely everywhere, always and for all time. But they have no voice, cannot touch anything, smell it, taste it or hear it. In the same way that a body without the ability ‘drive’ itself is just as useless, effectively. It’s the combination of the two, this amazing symbiotic relationship, that makes us the powerful entities that we are.
That’s a realisation.
That gives us cause to pause and ponder a while, the magnificent creation we are and the amazing set of coincidences, even if we believe in coincidence, that had to happen for us to be what we are, and how we work.
And while you think about that I’ll leave you with the quote I began with….
‘We are never more awake and alive than when we experience our world through our five senses. And when we are aware of them separately, they recombine to become vastly bigger than the sum of their parts’.
Simon Pollard March 2022
