13 things I take for granted
'Cus life is weirder than I tend to remember
Through the course of daily life, I tend to forget some of its most basic truths. Things that are obvious, yet extremely profound, when I take the time to think about them.
And so, this is a reminder to myself. To not take these things for granted. To be grateful for the invisible forces that make life incredible.
#1 I’m pretty incompetent on my own.
Compared to how humans have lived throughout our entire evolution, most modern people don’t know how to do much at all.
Our ancestors built their shelters, tracked animals, foraged for food, and healed wounds with whatever nature provided.
Even if duties were split among the tribe, that tribe was small enough that things couldn’t be divided as much as they are today.
Now, we rely on the collective skills of millions to survive.
From farmers to doctors to the people who stock our grocery stores to the folks who entertain us after a long day’s work.
This isn’t meant to point out our weaknesses. But a testament to how well we collaborate… even though it doesn’t seem like it most of the time. Society functions because people dedicate their lives to different pieces of the puzzle.
Only a tiny fraction of modern humans are completely self-reliant. I’m not one of those.
For God’s sake, I’ve dedicated my professional life to writing ads – what the hell good does that do me without relying on other people? It doesn’t exactly provide me with the best set of skills for an apocalypse.
Yet, I rarely acknowledge the invisible systems that make my survival possible.
Maybe we don’t “owe” something to these systems. But we can at least notice them.
#2 If you’re alive, your ancestors were badass.
They survived, at least.
And that ain’t nothin’. That’s surviving…
Prehistoric predators
Ice ages
Famines
Plagues
Brutal wars
Oppression
Watching your children die
Natural disasters
And other hardships we can’t begin to understand in this modern world.
While we may outsource a lot of our survival to people we’ll never meet…
And many of us distract ourselves from any hint of pain and sadness with our addictions (phones, drugs, sex, work)...
We still have this same wiring deep inside of us.
The same survival instincts.
The same adaptability.
The same unbreakable human spirit.
And that’s worth recognizing.
#3 Knowledge is an infinite conversation.
Between people from an incredible range of places, times, and circumstances…
Knowledge isn’t something we create alone. It’s something we inherit and pass forward. Every book, every invention, every idea is a response to something that came before it.
We tend to think of our ideas as things we "discover," but in reality, we’re always receiving and remixing the insights of those who came before us.
Even our language is inherited. Our words, phrases, and metaphors are built on the foundation of countless speakers before us.
We never form our ideas “from scratch”...
we always start mid-sentence in a conversation that never ends.
#4 Unchosen traits shape our lives.
Before we even get a chance to make real choices, so much of our experience has already been determined based on things we just… got.
Our height. Our ugly face. How fast we run. How mentally quick we are.
All of these uncontrollable details play a large role in how we experience life. Especially in our most formative years.
These attributes are critical in determining how we’re socially positioned among peers in school. And this begins at an age when life hasn’t given you a chance to begin to understand them yet.
How we’re seen socially impacts how we see ourselves. At least, I’d guess that’s true for most people – I can only speak for myself.
Some people go to therapy, realize these early-programmed patterns and beliefs, blame their parents, and then try to change them.
Many of us are still playing out the roles we were assigned at 10, 15, 18 years old – whether we realize it or not.
We’re just thrown into the world, and before having a chance to figure ourselves out, other people figure out who we are for us.
They decide how to label us, where we fit, and whether we’re someone who is listened to, admired, ignored, or pushed around.
So what can we do with this information? My guess is nothing.
#5 Mostly everything good in your life happened by chance.
Yet, we still have this innate desire to remove uncertainty.
We try to control every aspect of our lives. But if we really thought about it, most of what we love about our lives happened randomly.
Let’s use my life thus far as an example…
I didn’t control when I met my partner Emily.
In fact, I repeatedly denied to the people around me that I would ever date her – I was graduating and she still had a year left of college, so it just didn’t make any logical sense in my mind.
But fate had its way of making that happen.
I didn’t control my career path.
I actually never would have guessed that I’d be a freelance copywriter when I was in college. The opportunity popped up because I graduated in 2020, the year of Covid, and didn’t have any other place to use my new Marketing degree.
Fate had its way of making that happen.
I had no control over which country I was born in.
Or which language would shape my thoughts.
Or the fact that my grandfather wasn’t killed in the war before passing on his DNA.
Alright, let’s get even weirder with this…
I didn’t control the exact sperm which fertilized the egg which made me me.
It could have just as easily been some other douchebag sperm – same name, similar life – but who probably would’ve screwed it all up.
Lucky for me, it wasn’t.
I love my life. Yet I played a very small part in what brought it to fruition. So why do I still have such a strong instinct to control the future?
#6 How well the universe fits together.
Consider migration:
Animals just know when to move. They don’t question it.
Birds fly thousands of miles, sea turtles return to the exact beach they were born on, salmon fight their way upstream, and monarch butterflies take a trip they won’t even live to complete.
This kind of order exists everywhere. Seasons shift on cue. Ecosystems keep themselves in balance – until something (usually humans) throws them off.
The entire food chain is a delicate puzzle where each piece depends on another. Even our own bodies are built on invisible systems that function without our input – circulation, digestion, healing.
None of this was designed, at least not by us. And yet, it all fits together in ways we barely notice.
Maybe we’re just another moving part that makes the whole thing work.
#7 Most of what we consider “true” is second-hand knowledge.
We put a lot of faith in other people, even if we pride ourselves on independence. In fact, almost nothing that we know to be “true” of the world at large comes from first-hand experience.
Flat-earthers may have the right starting point – the wrong conclusion – but at least they recognize that most of what we accept as truth is taken on trust.
In that case, most of us haven’t seen the Earth from an outside perspective.
Horizons – yes. But we (me) only understand that as evidence for a round earth because some nerdy looking guy told us it was.
The earth is round (I’m pretty sure). My point is that even the least trusting people in the world still have to trust a staggering amount of information to simply function.
Maybe that’s why it’s easy for people to fall into conspiracy theories. Because at the end of the day, when it comes to “right” information and “wrong” information – especially at a world scale, there’s almost an equal amount of trust that’s needed to believe either.
The difference isn’t in the mechanics of belief, but in which sources a person chooses to accept.
If everything we know about history, science, and reality itself is second-hand, then to someone primed to reject authority, an alternative version of events might feel just as valid as the widely accepted one.
It’s not that conspiracy theorists reject trust entirely. It’s that they redirect it – to different “experts”, different stories, different frameworks for how the world works.
And if every worldview is built on borrowed knowledge, then where that knowledge comes from matters a lot.
#8 History is more than a set of stories.
Yet my tendency is to think of it as stories.
How do I know this? Because sometimes, I really think about these historical figures as people… really consider living in that period… really put myself there…
and it feels different.
But they were real people, with thoughts running through their heads, with favorite meals, annoying neighbors, inside jokes. They had moments of panic, moments of boredom, moments of absolute joy.
And when I let myself really think about that, it’s different. More intense.
So I know I’m not always doing this. I’m not always thinking of them as real human beings. Otherwise, I’d have this intense feeling every time I learned about history.
Maybe it’s a defense mechanism or something.
And I think this same phenomenon applies to the news, too.
#9 Music is such a powerful and mysterious phenomenon
Sound has such a massive impact on our emotions.
In an instant, it can alter our mood – hype us up, calm us down, sad, happy – the whole spectrum.
And these effects seem to amplify when experiencing music with others in a live setting.
It seems like it’s always been this way. Forever and always, across societies.
I’m not sure it’s even possible for us to grasp why.
It makes sense that movies and shows make us feel such deep emotions – with the stories, and characters, and all. But simple sounds? It’s incredible when you take a second to think about it.
And it’s easy to take music for granted, since we’re surrounded by it constantly.
It’s on at the grocery store. In the elevator. We listen to music when we work. In the car. On a run. On a hike.
It’s the background of our favorite movies and TV shows. It’s the background of our car rides. It’s the soundtrack to our lives.
We don’t always notice it. But personally, I think music is one of the most incredible privileges in this life.
#10 The universal things that inspire awe in us.
It’s not a question of… are these things amazing?
Yes, they’re amazing. And most of humanity seems to agree on that.
Sunsets. Big mountain views. The ocean.
But what is it that makes all of us seem to accept that these things ARE amazing? Why can these things reliably inspire such awe in us?
Whatever the reason, we don’t seem to question it (even though that’s what I’m doing right now).
We just feel it. And maybe that’s the point.
#11 Attention shapes our reality.
The world we pay attention to is very directly linked to the world we live in.
And we all know it. “Ignorance is bliss,” as the saying goes.
Yet we justify attention on the negative as a “moral duty.” We focus on news headlines that we know are meant to drive fear in us… things we know that we have no control over.
Because the opposite is ignorance.
And ignorance is bad. right?
#12 The disappearance of silence.
Modern life is loud. Not always in decibels, but the sheer quantity of noise.
As an example, I’ll use my walk through Denver to get to the coffee shop where I’m currently typing this:
The cars on the road. The beeps of an angry morning commuter. The screams of a schizophrenic. The loud, indistinct hums of construction.
And then I finally escape into the coffee shop. Where things quiet down a bit compared to the outside city noise, but not much.
Jazz plays in the background. The sound of my typing fingers. The chatter of folks who are ordering. The drip of coffee from the machine into the to-go cup.
It’s normal for us. But compared to how humans have lived through most of our evolution, it’s an onslaught of constant noise.
So what would more silence bring?
More time to reflect, maybe. More time to think. Or not to think at all.
Maybe that’s why meditation has gotten so popular. We’ve created such a loud world that even silence costs $9.99 in the App Store.
#13 There’s 8 fucking billion of us.
And counting.
Seriously, that’s a lot of people.
And you know that internal world you live in? The internal monologue that’s constantly following you around? Those nasty inner demons you’ve been battling with?
That means there are roughly 8 billion of those too.
But to be completely honest, I haven’t counted myself (see “second-hand knowledge” bullet).