Umwelt actually

ac·tu·al·ly  (kch--l) adv.

1. In fact; in reality: That tree is actually a fir, not a pine.

2. Used to express wonder, surprise, or incredulity: I actually won the lottery!

What if I really actually did what I say I'm going to do? What might happen... Actually following through on telling my Dad I love him. Actually calling up my nephew to ask how his hockey game was. Actually doing the uncomfortable thing that pokes me, challenges me, confronts. Actually living as if my life depended on it. As if I'm going to die. And really going out there. Going out on a limb. Trying stuff. Getting down on the floor to play with my kids. Taking every moment as a goldmine. Sifting through each second as gravel in a river bed, sifting, shaking time, and being with the people in my life, really seeing them, for who they are. Sifting through the stories, and gossip, the landfill filters I experience the world through.

There is a biologist named Jacob von Uexkull who used the term umwelt to describe the world around a living thing as that creature experiences it. For many years (until very recently actually), I thought the word for the chess piece "pawn" was "pond". And I lived in that reality as if it were true, and every conversation I had about chess would re-confirm my reality, as I would hear "pond", and would say "pond". No one corrected me, I imagine, because they heard me say "pawn", as it matched their reality. (Or they were just being kind.) And then there was this moment when I learned that pond was pawn, and everything shifted, like a whole new reality. The brilliance of the word "umwelt" is that it captures how we experience the world in all the ways that we do, seeing, hearing, smelling, all the senses, and all the ways we take in the world and shape it to make it real.

Another time when I was up in front of a class, and the teacher reflected back his experience of me. I had mentally left the room. "Mike, you've gone away. You aren't here right now." And I had gone away, in my mind. I was physically standing there, but had left the building. I was just a shell, smiling. I'd disappeared, quite conveniently, really, when threatened, mentally leaving seems quite a comfortable option. Then I don't really have to engage, interact, deal with what's there. The interesting part was that I thought everybody did that. I thought everyone experienced the world that way, and that there was no other way, no other reality. That was it. Until I came back. I returned in that moment, and experienced a different way of being. A different reality. And I was there. Present. Engaged. Alive. And then I had choice. To show up or not.

We now know that there is not one space and one time only, but that there are as many spaces and times as there are subjects, as each subject is contained by its own environment which possesses its own space and time. 

--Jacob von Uexkull

Theoretical Biology

The View from the Oak