I’m beginning a new creative project called the 100 Days Project. I’ve been invited into a group of about a dozen people who encourage each other to do something creative. I decided to write a rough draft book over the 100 days. Because the internet platform used by the group has only rudimentary editing tools, I’m going to post my 100 chapters here at Dangerous Intersection. I will title each chapter “How to Be a Human Animal: Chapter X.” We’ll see how this comes out. In this post, I’m including the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2.

It’s not really a book for babies, of course. It is my existential lament that I wish I had learned a lot of these things earlier in my life. And I wish I didn’t need to learn so many of these lessons the hard way. Here are my first few installments:

How to be a Human Animal: Suggested Reading for Every Newborn Baby.

Introduction

You Get Only One Thousand Months

Welcome to the world, Baby! This Baby Book will offer you 100 insights on how to be a human animal. Other people will give you lots of good advice, of course, most of it boiling down to this: eat healthy food, sleep enough and don’t be a jerk. Absolutely. Those things are definitely important, but this book other important things that you don’t hear about as much.Being young is such a difficult way to grow up! You have no experience or training when you are young. You need to figure out everything. I hope that the insights in these 100 chapters will serve as a virtual mentor, to help you avoid some hazards and time drains.

If successful, this book will offer you a bit more quality time to enjoy some of the many awesome things happening on this big crazy sphere! Things like hiking trails, peanut butter sandwiches, miracle medical cures for many painful ailments, laughing, long-term friendships, creating and enjoying art, sunsets, sex, grapes, putting band aids on your child’s ouchies, campfires, Tetris, Bob’s Burgers, jazz, mentoring, puppies, late night conversations, good poops, Hubble photos, and looking into your lover’s eyes.

Enjoy your stay on Earth!

Chapter 1: You Are Lucky to Be Here

Hi, Baby. I have some good news and some bad news.

First, some good news. You are extremely lucky to be here. The odds were very much against you every being born. In order for you to be here, your 256 great great great great great great great grandparents each had to have sex at exactly the right day and hour. That would be impossible to coordinate, but it somehow happened. So congratulations!

We’ll talk about sex in more detail in a later chapter, but for now, please note that you benefitted from the fact that sex is such an incredibly strong instinct in our species and in all animal ancestors, extending all the way back to your proto-primate ancestors, the shrew-like critters that co-existed with the dinosaurs, the ancient shore-exploring fish such as Tiktaalik, and every other life form in your family tree. You are lucky that all of your ancestors were horny. This presumably goes all the way back to the first randy primordial bacterium in your family tree who, in fairness, you should think of as your grandparent. This immense journey from earliest life form to your primate body didn’t happen instantly, but neither did it take an eternity. Here is a thought experiment, a way to visualize your evolution rapidly as you drive past your maternal lineage at highway speed.

Chapter 2: You Get Only One Thousand Months

Here’s more good news. Those who keep statistics say that since you were born in the U.S., it’s realistic to think you will live almost 80 years. From your infant eyes, that must seem like an eternity. Here’s some bad news: 80 years is only 960 months, which I’m going to round up to 1,000 because I don’t want existential anxiety to mess with your tiny bowel movements. Here are 1,000 dots.

Take away one dot each month and that’s all the time you get if you live 80 years.

Here is more not-so-good news. You won’t be fully self-actualized at birth. Evolution had to work a crazy compromise. The social and intellectual gymnastics characteristic of your species requires a bigger brain than your non-human primate cousins, too big to allow you to emerge from your mother’s womb fully functional at birth. A baby with a big functional human brain would endanger or kill the baby’s mom at birth. You are born severely underdeveloped. You will be mostly helpless for a couple years after birth and that’s just the beginning. You’ll need about 20 years to function fully as an adult. That’s leaves only 750 months for you to live as an adult (and that’s only if you take good care of your body). This thought terrifies most people, but if you are wise, you will bravely take note of your limited time and strive to make the best of it.

Eventually your body will completely break down and your body will completely stop working. You will not think any more thoughts you won’t feel anything at all and you’ll be dead. My operating assumption is that death is nothing to worry about. It will be a lot like it was before you were born. Again, that’s only my assumption.

Again, you’ll only get to live about 750 months. About half of the people I know consider this number of 750 months to be a curse and the other half use that number as an incentive to live a life they can be proud of. Will you celebrate this gift of 750 months by living a life that is well-informed, socially-interactive, creative and kind-hearted? Or will you waste it in the glow of TV and computer screens and obsessing about consumer goods and money? It’s your choice.

Keep in mind that little things eat up big swaths of time over a year. Should I keep my beard, which takes almost no upkeep? Or should I be clean-shaven, which takes 3 min/day = 12 hours per year.  I know this sounds like a silly illustration, but you can’t argue with these numbers. Here’s another example: If you watch a junk TV show for one hour per day for a year, that adds up to 365 hours = 45 full time work days down the drain per year. That’s more than two months of full-time work!

The lesson: Your months will go by quickly, so spend them mindfully. Time is a non-replenishable resource, but most people don’t seem to understand this until it’s too late. When you are a young child, a day can seem like an eternity. As an active adult, time will dramatically speed up. Months will eventually start whizzing by as if they were days that are punctuated by 30 little naps. Think carefully about time management strategies, including daily to-do lists. If you don’t your precious gift of life will swiftly slip away.

I wish I could make this post light-hearted, but it’s just too damned existentially important. You have been given a great gift by being born. In the end, hopefully 80 well-lived years from now, you will find yourself in one of two deathbed scenarios: A) I could have done some really cool things in my life if I had actually gotten off my butt to work hard at them, but I squandered my opportunity, or B) I worked hard to do some really cool things. Some of them succeeded, and others failed, but I learned a lot in the process, met lots of wonderful people and I’m now dying in good conscience.

Epilogue:

Here is a video featuring a watch that runs backwards. I’m not including this video to promote the product, but rather because this product pitch relates to the above post: