When I was an undergraduate, I studied Anthropology and Psychology. Both fields were equally fascinating to me, so I double majored. However, there isn’t much you can do with anthropological studies practically, so I became a psychologist.
In truth, both subjects are more closely related than I thought. Both deal with human evolution.
The longer I help people to grow, heal, and self-discover, the more I realize it is all about human evolution.
The Call to Survive
I tell my clients about evolution: what we do to survive, the strength of the call to survive. For centuries, millions have walked before us. Evolution is in our bones and loins and cells.
When I am in nature, I can feel and know the great force pulling all of us along..
As an undergraduate, it was interesting to learn about the ones who came before. The primates and the primitive cultures. I liked seeing how they lived their lives – how they made food and structured their social world. I enjoyed learning about baboons, chimps, and orangutans, to see the familiarity of these animals.
I still admire Jane Goodall for seeing the connections between us and the chimps. It’s enlightening to see us on the continuum. Where we came from. How we came to stand upright. It is fascinating to me how we survived and evolved to where we are now.
Evolution is a powerful force. Babies survive in wombs even if unwanted. Sometimes they survive even when the mother doesn’t have enough food to feed them after the birth.
Nature Keeps Trying to Move Us Along
It’s miraculous that, after atrocities, my grandparents came to the USA and had parties and celebrations. They found a way to be joyful again.
How did they do that? To go on without family or lineage or a land of their own. How did they manage that? It is a miracle.
Yes, so many forms of survival and evolutionary pulls.
I saw a sketch in a National Geographic Magazine of primates looking out at us. The females were holding babies. All were gathered together. Suddenly, they were real to me – faces – huddles – babies, men, women, and hair.
Evolution.
How did we get here from there? One day, someone might peer at us and marvel at how elementary and “primitive” we are.
But until then, we follow our will to know ourselves and find our happiness, again and again. For that, we can thank the obstinate heart of human evolution.