How deep is the rabbit hole?

I (we) won a gold medal in a 4x100m relay during my 5th grade. I had a few other silver and bronze medals, but I didn’t really keep them in a special place, and then they were all forgotten. But this gold medal, I carry almost wherever I go in life, even when I moved from Hong Kong to Singapore, and from Montreal to Switzerland. Who knows, maybe I will carry it to my grave?

If you ask me, I don’t really know why I keep it around like it is a part of me. I don’t look at nor kiss it every day. After all, it is just a dull piece of metal. It is not real gold, so it gets rusty and is not pretty, and I rarely show it off to others (except this story?). What’s more, I must say this 4x100m race was not particularly influential to me. It definitely wouldn’t qualify as one of the top life events that has shaped or transformed me tangibly.

I remember I was a substitute that day, the 5th person of a 4-person relay. So, I felt kind of left out initially. But just before the race, I got the news that my first-leg classmate had some issues and could not participate (not exactly sure what it was, but it was nothing serious, just random kid’s issues…). After, I got called up to run the first leg by my classmates. As far as I can remember, it was the first time I stepped up to take on a “group responsibility”, and in retrospect, the first approval of my athletic ability by my peers even though I clearly wasn’t Quicksilver. Of course, the young me did not understand all of this, I just ran after the gunshot and passed the baton to my teammate. I wasn’t the decisive factor in our victory, but I still felt a dose of contentment when we ended up as the champions.

This subtle feeling of contentment has stuck with me whenever my eyes cross paths with this medal. The feeling is far from anything dramatic or emotionally stirring. It just calms me a little, and I feel peaceful instead of overjoyed. I guess it is a symbol for me that life was once simple and joyful as my childhood was indeed smooth and uncomplicated.

I still remember the names, faces and sprinting styles of my relay teammates (not so much about my other elementary school classmates), and I am even a best friend with one of them. But now, we all live in distant places. So, you can say I keep a dead, rusty medal closer to me than I am with living, breathing humans, or comrades whom I should cherish. Why would that be? Perhaps, humans could become too warm or too cold when getting close, but this medal comforts me at just the right temperature, that’s all it does, simple and reliable.

That’s it, my psychological connection with this medal is simple and reliable, as opposed to most human-human relationships which are volatile. Connections in the living world are complicated by expectations and obligations. We all have separate races in life and we don’t have a common goal like we had in the 4x100m relay. No common goals mean we have no choice but to part ways.

A medal can’t run unless you throw it away. Permanence is a factor in connection. It is like the way I am attached to my comfy, sturdy bed that always offers me comfort, but if you give me a squeaky bed that might fall apart any time in the middle of my sleep, I could never form a connection with it. That also explains why people obsess with ideals like eternal, unconditional love because it symbolizes that at least something in our life is permanent, that we are not just fleeting sparks or flickering light to be lost in vacuum. Meanings and feelings can perhaps stand the test of time better than materials.

Nevertheless, human-human relationships break apart whenever expectations don’t meet reality. Luckily, I cannot conceive of any expectation I have on my medal, nor did the medal behave more unexpectedly than mere metal, and that’s why our connection remains stable.

Extra: Read about what game theory and ecology teach us to develop healthy, nurturing relationships full of potential here.

So, does that mean we should all befriend a plushie and marry a figurine?

Possibly, but as an Ecologist, I am inclined to say no. No, because I know so many great relationships between living beings across the domains of life. Not all living relationships are meant to be volatile.

When living beings start to become reliable to each other, they forge the strongest connection ever — symbiosis. We know biological connections that have outlasted even the permanence of rocks or precious metals — from the union of an , and that of an since billions of years ago. They are the mother of all connections in Mother Nature as we know it and they are still thriving. Who knows, maybe they will continue until the Sun becomes a Red Giant?

My relationship with my gold medal is no comparison certainly. What’s more, the symbiotic living relationships are not stagnant and one-dimensional like the peace I always receive from my medal (even though I am grateful). The living partners in crime are actively exploring new possibilities and innovating together, creating branch after branch in the tree of life and carving new memories and meanings in the history of life.

Extra: evolved around 400, around 273, and around 250 million years ago.

Humans can learn a thing or two from these creative, centenarian connections. For unknown reasons, our society treats creativity and stability as mutually exclusive (like, have you heard of the ridiculous meme that women must settle down with a stable but boring man as they age?). I don’t know where that sentiment comes from, but countless pets have thoroughly dispelled this myth by showing us the best of both worlds is possible.

Some say this is possible because pets are the angels on Earth. However, I think the best symbiosis forges not because of some perfect, heavenly pets. The best emerges out of continuous practice and compromise, not by seeking the “best” candidate from the get-go. Notice how we commit to love our pets no matter their bodies are diseased or disabled? Neither you nor your symbiotic partner need to be the “best” to share joy and creativity. Same as the joyful me who won that race as the 5th person of a 4-person relay.

When that day comes that we no longer obsess with seeking out the best individuals, I dare to say that human-human connections will transcend to a new level, and a new, interconnected species of humanity shall be born tomorrow.

© Marmotian 2024

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Our Deep Connection to Dead Objects was originally published in Contemplate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just as marmots are crawling out of rock crevices to welcome the vivifying Spring, Marmotians are sneaking out of the ivory towers to get in touch with vitamin D and reality. Like a Mars rover’s drill, our industrious fingers continue to dig deep.

In the coming mission, we acknowledge that planet Earth is not looking great at the moment and hence we are stationing ourselves on Mars to observe from afar. What can we learn about Earth’s imperilment from a bird’s eye perspective?

Marmotians think certain truth emerges when we look into the vast relationships and dynamics beyond ourselves, like a kingfisher watching the frenzy unfolding in the fishpond down below. The fish inside the pond, in contrast, cannot tell laws and relationships beyond its bounds: where do all these “unpredictable” airstrikes come from? Where do the occasional mudslides come from? Why does the water there suddenly taste different? Is this murky pond the totality of the Observable Universe? A fish can only see the “random” events as either apocalypses or miracles, until one elevates itself out of the water and sees the world afresh.

Seeking knowledge high up from a bird’s eye view is an experience that can untether you from many unnecessary human dramas. The downside is that flying high may also untether you from gravity and make you drift aimlessly, thereby losing your humanly senses. “當局者迷，旁觀者清” as the old Chinese said.

There is yet another dilemma. For our sensitive minds, new chaos emerges whenever we fly higher to see further. referred to this tension as humans’ deepest struggle in search of knowledge. Imagine Lovecraft, or anyone feeling the suffocating dread in a sombre back alley towered by concrete canopy, they would feel the urge to climb up a tower gasping for fresh air and scenery. Up there, however, what meets their eyes anew is an engulfing concrete jungle sprawling out of control. A new fear is inevitable, one that transcends the triviality of singular individuals into a vast unexplored jungle. Fearing uncharted territory is our instinct, high or low doesn’t matter.

One way to ease the fear of newfound chaos is to examine one’s own intuition bottom-up. Let’s say you know the little corner of the jungle you call home is inhabited by a cannibal tribe, laden with venomous snakes and blood-sucking leeches. Once you saw how vast the jungle is for the first time from a hilltop, surely it would feel like hell dawn on you. What are the “ingredients” that constitute this fear? Is it the “unknowns” and “uncontrollables”? Is it your (unverified) assumptions about a hidden state of affairs (that every inch of the vast jungle is as unsafe as your home)? Such introspections lead to more investigations, once you examine enough, these internal dramas may not even be justified. Questioning the perceived chaos eventually leads to clearer, deconstructed patterns/regularities that we can fit into the larger causal structure (truth).

Such bottom-up investigations give something different than bird’s-eye observations. Observations deal with the observables, primarily of visible light since it travels the fastest to reach our eyes. One cannot hear or smell a jungle, nor spot an earthworm digging through subterrain from satellite imagery data. Lots of events and dramas, and almost all the “whys” happen under the visible curtain. Assumptions fill those missing “whys” and hence there is a place for dissecting your own mind, tickling every nerve and deconstructing all the prior “knowns” or preconceptions.

Would you rather climb a mountain or run a manipulative experiment (either physical or thought)?

There are different levels of truth — at the top being of statistical nature, and at the bottom being “ground truth” that cannot be further decomposed. Sometimes, the two can align. Marmotian’s take is that a mixed approach that seeks both levels can reveal the most robust insight. Of course, it depends on the problem of interest ultimately, sometimes a problem is a problem because it lacks foundational truths, and other times it is the missing (multivariate) statistical picture. Personal constraints also set the stage, as the average person often has no access to sophisticated instruments and data. With all these constraints comes great opportunities to exercise our creativity, hence writing creative essays is one of our top priorities.

Keeping this information in mind, Marmotian hopes to bring you closer to truth on some of the most contentious issues. A few examples: What are some commonly discernible weaknesses of our minds? Of science? Of data? How do they relate to our earthly crises? And why does the status quo seem immutable and if so, how can we push through, whether statistically or by principle? Our goal is to un-twist your mind from prior conditioning and enable you to transform into a flying bird and an anatomist at will.

“You are the only author of your wisdom. Don’t just read: think, connect the dots, create, and evaluate”.