Innocent Lies
What we say when we forget our connections
I went to San Francisco for a conference in 2022. It was a tight turnaround, 24 hours and back East on a redeye. As usual, I didn’t sleep and as the plane descended into a Newark sunrise, I was both weary and energized.
As we deplaned from the back, I noticed a young family, father behind, mother in front with a forward-facing infant in a baby bjorn. Letting them go first, I said “What a beautiful baby. Where’d you get it?”
She looked me in the eyes and without thinking proclaimed, “I made it myself”.
What a great line. But then I look at her husband dutifully schlepping their gear and thought “Liar!”
This little exchange has stayed with me for years. “Did she really believe it or was she tired and it popped out of her mouth?” I’m sure it was the latter.
But we all say things like which is even more strange.
I once was sitting in an apartment in Harlem, 25 years old and passing a joint with friends. An epiphany hit me and I said “Do you have any idea how lucky we are to be here now with the friends we have, knowing what we know? We could have been flies sitting on dinosaur shit!”
The sheerly unlikelihood of our own existence propels explanatory religions and theories that we are living in a computer simulation. I find reality, unvarnished, to be far more awe-inspiring - that we are the most intelligent beings every created, equipped for language and having souls. As far as we know, we’re the only ones out there. It’s a miracle.
And explaining it speaks to the young mother’s lie. We’ve done almost nothing ourselves, not procreation, existence or transcendence. We are vastly interconnected, indebted to ancestors we’ll never know, to scientists whose names have faded from history and to young people who have served, often tragically, sacrificing themselves so we could fly on planes, eat ice-cream and criticize the world, free of fear.
I still love the young mother’s line and it makes me happy. It makes me think of the word “Homemade”.
But I also think of what else makes us human - our connection us to a vast web of others, to butterflies beating their wings a world away. Our planetary weather and other commons, where coal clouds in Bhopal can cause drought in California. And our intellects, networked and ever-increasing, touching others overseas and curing diseases.
And so, fellow travelers, the next time someone compliments your work, pause and thank those who came before.
“We made it ourselves”.