Did you ever stop to wonder how you came to think the things you think? Believe your beliefs? Or value your values over other values? Or even like the food you like? Or dance the way you do?
Humans come in all shapes, sizes, colors and are the most adaptable animals on the planet. We have managed to live on all 7 continents and to create over 7000 distinct languages.
Why don’t deer do this?
Our species has been able to do this thanks to a large brain that has neuroplasticity from birth until death.
Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, is a term that refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. Neuro refers to neurons or the nerve cells that are the building blocks of the brain and nervous system that communicate information, and plasticity refers to the brain’s malleability.
That means when you and I were born, we had a large blank slate available to be filled with information. We had to learn how to do all sorts of things because they were not hard wired at birth.
A baby deer can walk within a very short time of being born. You and I took months or a year to begin to master mobility.
Back to those 7000 languages and how our brain gets shaped…
Thinks about a dog’s bark. Can you hear it? What does a dog bark sound like to you? Write it down or say it aloud.
You got it? Are you sure you are right about this? And is a Japanese dog’s bark different from an Australian dog’s bark?
Nearly all dogs bark. Studies have shown that virtually all dogs understand the barks of other dogs regardless of where they come from. So an Australian dog understands a Japanese dog.
But get this – the way that humans hear those barks differs greatly.
The language the human speaks influences how they will hear the dog bark! And how the human represents those sounds as words.
Linguists say those words we use to represent dog barks are based on onomatopoeia, which is the process by which we try to characterize a real-world sound with a word that sounds something like it. In other words, the language we hear and speak influence how we perceive the world. The environment we grow up in influences our perception of something that has no measurable difference objectively speaking.
What we sort for, with our senses, is based on what we have already learned and experienced in our life previously. And each time we learn or experience something new, we are setting up new neural pathways for information to be channel and filtered through.
When we hear the dog bark – the same neurons that fire when we speak and hear our own language – fire when we hear a dog bark.
Even in a single language, there may be a number of different words used for a dog’s bark, for example, in English, we recognize “woof-woof,” “arf-arf”, “ruff-ruff” and “bow-wow.” Many languages also have different words for the barks of large versus small dogs, thus “yip-yip” or “yap-yap” are used in English for the barking sounds of small dogs, never for big dogs.
The only thing that seems to come close to being unanimously agreed upon about a dog’s bark is that dogs almost always speak twice—thus a Hebrew dog says “hav-hav”, a Japanese dog says “wan-wan” and a Kurdish dog says “hau-hau.”
Now let’s take a bigger view of this – yes you were born with certain genetic propensities, but most of what you believe, think, hear, and feel is based on the environment you have experienced. This environment includes the books you read in school, the news you watch or read, the things your caregivers taught you and the current company you keep.
In the US we are living in one of the most divisive times I have ever experienced.
I know that the way I think and act was primarily informed by what came before now, the people I am around, the prosperity, privilege and traumatic events I’ve experienced, and the company I keep. The more I learn to pay attention to what I experience around me, to listen and to see various perspectives, the less convinced that my opinion is the right one, and the more peaceful and connected I can be toward others.
BUT in order to be able to experience the world, from a more open minded and adaptable place, we need a regulated nervous system.
We need to be able to act, not just out of our past, not just out of fight, flight and freeze, but from a more regulated and balanced state. When we are acting out of fight, flight and freeze, we are acting out of our past. We are not tapping into our unique human ability to be highly adaptable. In other words, we are not using our greatest gift – our neuroplasticity.
When we are actually in a safe environment and in a more regulated and balanced state, we can hear one another much better and begin to build a world with more representation, less exclusion and less violence toward one another.
That’s the world, I want to live in. Hope you will join me.
Work your practices 💜listen to yourself and your body,
Astra
PS more next time on what to do when you are not safe and rest is not an option
