Humans 101.
Notes on the bipedal mammal that thinks it's a person.
I had an existential crisis on Tuesday, my fifth one this year. I almost lost it. Somehow, I keep almost losing it and yet never actually losing it, which is very maddening, just between the both of us; sometimes I envy mad people, they look so free or at least they seem that way to me.
I had—and actually, I still do—about twelve topics to read in preparation for a test, so I did the most reasonable thing anyone should do at that moment in time: I sat with my books opened in front of me and started pondering on why my thoughts were thinking themselves.
You see, it has long dawned on me that I’m not really the one "having" the anxious thoughts that I have. I mean, I have them, but it’s not of my own volition. Sometimes, they feel like an endless, disturbing slideshow passing through my mind, and it started to freak me out on that day. Are my thoughts trying to kill me by imagining the absolute worst-case scenario every single time and then reporting back to me? Is it a form of protection, or are they planning to upstage me from the inside? I abandoned all my study notes(which I wasn't even reading anyways)and decided to dive deep into finding out why my brain often refuses to listen to me, to think of what I told it to think of, and I found out a lot. A whole lot.
I started out trying to understand why I was always having anxious thoughts but I ended up down a rabbit hole of neuro-absurdity.
The pivot from my pre-study meltdown to a full-blown biological conspiracy theory started the moment I discovered that my brain is essentially an autonomous biological supercomputer that I am just loosely tethered to. I found out that our brains are constantly making decisions up to ten seconds before we’re even consciously aware of them. This was no longer about having anxious thoughts; I was being haunted by a three-pound organ in my head that operates on its own agenda, firing off electrical signals and chemical commands without ever asking for my permission
Realizing that I am probably just a passenger in a vehicle that drives itself using a series of nearly impossible, high-stakes chemical reactions was the tipping point. That was when my research shifted from "why are my thoughts thinking themselves?" to the much more terrifying reality: the math of our existence doesn't add up, we're not supposed to be possible. Also, I am an alien.
The Biological Absurdity
Let’s quickly look at some specs, there's no time to waste.
• A human is roughly 60% water. We are practically puddles held upright by a calcium scaffolding and if we lose just 10% of that water, our systems begin to collapse. It makes sense now that we evolved from fishes, I’ve always known that in another universe, I am a fish, specifically a Manta Ray.
• Every human carries a stomach full of hydrochloric acid strong enough to dissolve metal. We only survive because we grow a new stomach lining every three to five days. Does this not make you wish you could spew acid from your mouth like venom? My first target would be Nigerian men who pee by the roadside.
• Our cells are powered by tiny, ancient organisms called mitochondria that have their own separate DNA. At some point in their history, a cell swallowed a bacterium and, instead of eating it, decided to enter into a permanent, high-stakes business merger. Every human is actually a colony of two different species pretending to be one person, this might be a good time to add that roughly 50-57% of the cells in your body are not human cells but rather microscopic organisms that make up your biome.
See, I'm just going to give it you straight; by cell count, you're more bacteria than human. More than half of your body isn't human😭
• Every second, a human body produces roughly 2 to 3 million new red blood cells. We are constantly rebuilding themselves from the inside out just to stay in the same place( Actually we are not, all of these is going on without any help from us, I hate to break it to us but it’s looking like in the grand scheme of things, we don't really matter like that but stay with me, we're going somewhere)
It gets weirder, we are so energy-hungry that we produce and “explode” roughly our own body weight in ATP every single day.
If we stopped producing this “internal dynamite” for even a few minutes, we would stop being a person and start being a statue. Let’s assume that you weigh 70kg. You are a 70kg creature that manages to set off 70kg of chemical explosions within your body every 24 hours without ever blowing your own limbs off.
The Physics of the "Impossible"
I detest anything Physics so I am just going to keep this simple so I don't remember what it did to me in the past.
From a kinetic standpoint, we are also a disaster. We decided to stand on two limbs instead of four, turning our entire existence into a controlled fall. The center of our gravity is a joke.
And yet, we use this precariousness to navigate our world. We carry around a three-pound lump of electrified fat in our skulls that consumes 20% of our total energy. The brain is so powerful it creates problems that don't exist( kindly refer back to how I got here in the first place) just to have something to solve. It hallucinates a reality out of photons and vibrations and calls it "Tuesday."
Why Earth should have killed us already
Looking at the planet itself, the humans shouldn't have made it past the first act.
Earth is a pressurized, rotating sphere of molten rock with a thin, brittle crust. It is constantly being pelted by cosmic radiation and solar winds that should strip the atmosphere clean. The only reason humans aren't irradiated husks is because of a swirling iron core thousands of miles beneath our feet creating an invisible magnetic shield. We are literally protected by a planetary-scale force field we can't even see.
And to make things worse, we breathe oxygen. In the grand chemistry of the universe, oxygen is a violent, corrosive gas. It makes things rust; it makes things burn but somehow we have evolved to inhale this slow-motion explosion to fuel our movements. We are powered by the very thing that eventually breaks us down.
Here's where it gets interesting;
If the universe is a place of strict rules, then humans are the ultimate glitch. We are made of star-dust, a collection of atoms that, against all odds, decided to have a favourite food. (I no longer have a favourite food hence why I now identify as an idea)
Because we shouldn't be possible, I don't think we are bound by the logic of the probable. If a creature made of water and electrical pulses can build a telescope to look at its own ancestors (the stars) then the word "impossible" is just a lack of imagination.
If your existence is already a miracle of the highest order, then the "risky" things you’re afraid of are actually quite mundane.
Since you are a walking, breathing defiance of entropy, a creature that somehow maintains complex order in a universe that prefers chaos, you are officially overqualified for the life you’re leading and the one you want to.
You don't just exist; you actively maintain a 37°C miracle against the cold vacuum of probability. You can:
1.Rewrite your "Hard Drive" at any age. Your brain possesses a trait called neuroplasticity, which is basically the ability to physically rewire its own circuitry based on new experiences. You aren’t stuck with a "fixed" personality; you are a living piece of software that can patch its own code. If a three-pound lump of fat can physically change its shape because you decided to learn Mandarin or the guitar, you can certainly change your mind about who you are.
2.Send that text. Your thoughts might feel like a glitchy slideshow, but they are your signals. If your heart can pump 2.5 billion times without you ever reminding it to, you can certainly find the pulse to say what you feel.
3. Change your entire identity. Your cells are already replacing themselves every seven years. You literally aren't the same biological collection you were a decade ago—so why act like you’re still bound by that person's mistakes? Let's not forget that every single day, you lose about 500 million skin cells. You are shedding your past, literally, every hour of every day. By this time next month, you will be wearing an entirely different outer layer.If your body is that committed to letting go of its old self, why are you still holding onto a mistake you made in 2019 or last year?
4. Tell that person you love and want them. It’s no more illogical than breathing a corrosive gas like oxygen just to keep your body running.
5. Edit your own biological "source code." You are not a static blueprint written in stone; you are an interactive performance. Through a process called epigenetics, your environment, your habits, and even the way you process things act as "dimmer switches" on your genes. You can literally signal your DNA to turn certain traits on or off. If you can change the expression of your very building blocks just by changing the way you move through the world, then "staying the same" is actually the hardest thing to do.
6.Defy the "Battery" logic. Most machines break down the more you use them, but the human body operates on a "Use it or Grow it" paradox. If you stress your bones, they become denser. If you push your muscles, they tear and come back stronger. You are the prime example of an entity that gets more durable by being challenged. If the physics of your own limbs allow for growth through resistance, then your "impossible" dreams are just a form of weightlifting, bet on them.
7.Forgive the person who doesn't deserve it. Logic says you should be angry, but you've been defying logic since your first heartbeat, what's one more time?
8. Ask for more than you deserve. Logic and “fairness” are human inventions, but biology is a game of radical overreach. Our ancestors were single-celled organisms that had no “right” to become complex, air-breathing, star-gazing poets, yet they took the leap anyway. If you; a creature made of recycled stardust and stolen bacteria can claim a place on a molten rock in the middle of a vacuum, you can certainly ask for a seat at a table you weren’t invited to. You are already a statistical impossibility; why start playing it “fair” now? The universe didn’t give you life because you earned it; it gave it to you because it could. Demand the same from your world. Fortune favours the Bold
After over three hours of drowning in data, I finally understood why my brain often refuses to listen to me: it's actually very obvious, it's because I am not my brain.
I am the ghost in a biological machine. I am consciousness with a brain and somehow I developed the sheer audacity to realize I was watching my brain think. The anxiety, the "slideshow," the worst-case scenarios, that wasn’t me. That was just my hardware running a stress test.
Since I am the observer, the thing that can stand back and say, "Wow, my brain is really losing it right now", then I am already separate from the chaos. I am the signal, not the antenna.
To my fellow humans (as well as fishes and aliens) reading this: We are the universe’s most beautiful error. We are its way of looking back at itself, a symphony played on broken instruments. We are already doing the impossible just by inhaling and exhaling in a vacuum-sealed bubble of nitrogen and oxygen.
I saved the most baffling biological fact of all for the last:
Your brain will literally kill you just to make sure you stay safe. It will keep you small, paralyzed, and "logical" until your heart stops, all in the name of protection. In a crisis, if the body is starving or under extreme stress, the brain doesn't share. It will literally starve the rest of the organs to feed itself. It employs a "brain-first" rationing system, pulling every available calorie and ounce of glucose from the muscles and the heart just to keep its own neurons firing. It is a biological machine designed for survival, not for magic.
The magic is up to the Ghost, it is up to You
And if the math says you shouldn't be here anyway, you might as well make a show of it and do whatever the hell you want to. Create your own magic.
*All pictures are from Pinterest
*Please listen to the song, okay? It is everything, everything.
A fellow ponderer!🫶🏽
And yet, you wouldn't write this beautiful, reflective and intensely funny piece without your brain. So, in essence, you are BOTH your brain AND not your brain. The cat is both dead and alive. Amazing, isn't it. Absolutely incredible 🙃