There is a strange and fascinating duality in the human experience. On one hand, we are creatures of impulse and celebration—drawn to ritualized release, to forgetting ourselves in moments labeled as party time. On the other, we are vessels of staggering introspection, capable of ruminating deeply on the smallest details of life, like the sensory experience of an earthworm or the ethics of compost.
These polar instincts, pleasure and reflection, may seem contradictory but often coexist more than we realize. A night that begins with lighthearted abandon can end in a kitchen, quietly peeling apples, consumed not just by the motions of waste disposal but by the moral and sensory implications of it. This is not uncommon. As the buzz wears off, something else settles in: awareness. Not the grand, enlightenment-kind, but the small, almost unsettling clarity that brings meaning to something previously overlooked.
Consider this: the more we learn, the harder it becomes to interact with the world passively. A simple fact—like earthworms having taste buds across their soft pink bodies—can alter your daily rituals. Suddenly, composting isn’t routine; it’s communion. It becomes a moment of unexpected connection to a world beneath our feet, hidden and alive, feeling in ways we never considered. That awareness does something to us. It challenges our assumptions. It reframes the roles of creatures we once saw as beneath notice.
And this leads to a deeper question: once you’ve been touched by this knowledge, can you go back to being unbothered? Can you party as you once did, detached from the consequence and context of your joy? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean you must abandon it altogether. The beauty lies in the stretch—how far the mind can travel between moments of levity and moments of meaning.
This contrast, this leap from the frivolous to the philosophical, is what makes being human so extraordinary. We are allowed to be moved by both celebration and compost. To joke and to question. To crave connection, then dissect its complexity. Life is not one note. It is a messy, layered symphony, and the same person who raises a glass on Friday night can wax poetic about worm digestion on Saturday morning.
To be human is to embrace the contradiction without needing to resolve it. We laugh, we ponder, we forget, we remember. And sometimes, all in the same breath, we ask—half-serious, half-lost—who wants to come home with me? Not just for company, but for a glimpse into the strange, thoughtful wilderness we carry inside.
