An Infinite Capacity to Feel Finite Humanness

Plus, three great photos of animals. Because animals.

This dog stared at me through a window while I was trying to work from a coffee shop last Friday. I feel the need to share the delight of his face with you.

You know that whole bit, about Dunbar’s number? I wrote about it last year and linked to it again recently — it’s a concept that says individuals typically only have a capacity for about 150 relationships, tops. This includes deep, singular relationships like with our spouses and kids, but also with friends and neighbors, and even in peripheral relationships like knowing the barista’s name at our favorite cafe or repeatedly seeing the same dentist.

We humans are finite, and that’s clear with our capacity for deep relationships. But I’d argue that somehow Dunbar’s number could apply in other ways, too: in the amount of quality stuff we consume, in how much information we can input before need to sleep and organize it in our brains — and in what we experience. When we traveled long-term, I could only explore so much new stuff before I needed to pause and immerse myself in a hefty dose of ordinary so that I could file away and process the amazing.

We also have finite capacity in our ability to create. The older I get, the more I’m also convinced that, even when we’re brimming with ideas, we can only create so much at a time. Even our most prolific artists usually create one thing at a time, overlapping only slightly (and if they don’t, it’s because they have a team of wizards behind the curtain, pulling levers and making them seem like a veritable automaton on stage).  

We cannot do everything. We can’t write all the good books, bake all the cakes, plant all the vegetables, compose all the songs. We need other people to do the good work we can’t do. In fact, we mostly need other people to do them — this is how we know we need each other, and this is what makes communities. I need songwriters to sing the songs I need to hear. I need painters to brush their strokes across the canvases I need to witness. I need landscape architects to plant and sow just so, so that I can stroll through their gardens and breathe in the oxygen. We need each other’s art and work.