Material Girl

isn’t it amazing how life just passes by? milestones come out of nowhere and leave in a flash. there’s not a single moment one can be in for more than just that: a moment. they come and go in waves, a crazy phenomenon that has never happened before and will never happen again. children are born and grow old in a small collection of those moments. there’s nothing one can hold and grasp for a lifetime. there’s nothing one can have for eternity. there is no baby that comes into the world and stays a baby for more than what feels like a single day. we laugh and cry, but only for a moment.

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”

A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.” A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend. Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.