Note: A different version of this piece first appeared in my Advent series. I’m reposting it because I read this on January 9th for the Freedom Road Global Writers’ Group Showcase.
My friend Amanda told me a couple weeks ago that the human body doesn’t actually have receptors to feel “wet.” I wasn’t sure I believed her so I looked it up, and sure enough, what we call “wet” is a combination of sensations, but mainly the temperature difference that we experience as cold. It's why if something is warm in the dryer, we can’t tell if it’s really dry or not. Our brains make up the response “wet” from other data. It’s clever of them, but also telling. If we don’t have needed information, our brains will fill in the gap with something. We are meaning-makers and consciously or unconsciously we are making meaning. The task falls to us to do it intentionally and to question how we know what we know and how it’s all really connected.
How did we miss that the trees were connected? As I walk down th…
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