Exploring the science behind the interconnections of life
by Linda Chubbuck
Lionel Logue: What was your earliest memory?
King George VI: I’m not…here to discuss…personal matters.
Lionel Logue: Why are you here then?
King George VI: Because I bloody well stammer! 
In The King’s Speech, speech therapist Lionel Logue nudged King George VI to face his early painful memories. King George resisted – “Just the mechanics” was all he was willing to deal with.
The King wanted a problem solved, but, like most of us, only wanted to deal with the surface. He saw no connection to underlying, invisible issues.
My sister, who works in the counseling field, reminded me this week that, according to recent research, up to 98% of what goes into our decision making process happens BELOW the level of rational thought – memories, reactions, instincts, intuition.
Her comment reminded me of the work of mushroom expert Paul Stamets (Mycelium Running). Mushrooms, those individual little soldiers standing tall in the deep woods, are actually the visible markers of an entire underground network that is alive – a functioning, though mostly invisible, organism.
We are all connected – to each other, to all of life, to even inert matter, on this planet. Think of it – we are made, quite literally, from dust, which we consider “dead.” Upon examination under a microscope, we see that the dead stuff isn’t so dead as we thought. It’s full of micro-organisms with an elaborate life-system we can barely observe, much less understand. That not-so-dead dirt feeds and nourishes things like carrots, potatoes, and grasses with minerals and sugars made by the micro-organisms we cannot see.
So then, the carrots and potatoes and grasses – where do they go? Some go straight to our tables and bodies. Some go into the mouths and bodies of the cattle grazing the pastures. And in strange ways we cannot fully explain, that grass (made from inert things like sunlight and water and dirt added to a seed), transforms itself into animal flesh.
Wow! If we weren’t so familiar with this alchemy, perhaps we could see it for the miracle it really is.
That flesh, made from grass, may, if you aren’t a vegetarian, in turn end up in your body. Where it stops being cow-flesh, and instead becomes human flesh. Well, at least part of it does.
The other part, the unmentionables (oh and the unmentionables from the carrot and lettuce as well), goes away somewhere, when we press a small silver lever. It just disappears.
Or does it?
In most of the developed world, the “final solution” for our human waste is completely below the radar for much of the population.
But, because we are all connected, in the physical world as well as in the life cycle, there is no “away” where it goes.
Instead, that human waste is mixed with gallon after gallon of mostly clean pure water, and ends up in city sewage treatment plants. After applying chemicals to what remains after the water is drained from it … yechhhh… it is either burned (adding fumes to the city skyline), or trucked to the countryside and spread onto farmer’s fields.
Yep, back onto the same dirt that is growing your potatoes and carrots.
The unseen connections, networks, organisms, patterns – invisible, below, behind…. that’s where it’s REALLY happening.
Like King George VI, sometimes we must look at what’s behind the scenes in order to discover better solutions. We are all connected.
…… to be continued
