🧑‍🔧🧑‍🔧🧑‍🔧 TREE 492: People are all the same, except in lots of ways that matter very much

TREEpeat 136

Food is all the same. It goes in your mouth, gets swallowed, has its nutrients extracted and its useless parts eliminated. The end.

This is true, except for ‘the end’. Because it’s barely the beginning of what food is. It’s barely the beginning on what any single type of food is. Let’s choose beans. There are at least 37,390 varieties. Of the beans you know about, you can probably list half a dozen ways to prepare them before you have to start thinking. Variety is what makes food interesting.

Now let’s consider human beans.¹

Variety is what makes us interesting.
And smart,
innovative,
strong,
resilient,
fun.

Make an effort to celebrate and understand human variety. An easy way to do this is to consume the creative output – music, writing, art, movies, etc. – of people who don’t look, sound, believe or think like you do. Let it surprise, challenge and change you.

I’ve had a very taxing day and I’m writing this at bedtime on Tuesday, so I asked Midjourney to create a dancing gorilla in the style of Ralph Steadman.

Diversity can also be awkward. Embrace it (Spotify).

The FFOREST would love to know what books, music, art, films, etc from outside your same-as-me bubble have had an impact on you. You can tell us in the comments.

Grow slowly
Jeff

1. I’m not sorry.