Each being—human, animal, and more—senses and perceives the world in a unique way. This umwelt creates reality. We live within an umwelt in relationship with other beings living within their umwelts.
What a robust and glorious playground to wonder, imagine, awe, and connect amidst the infinite realities of sensing and perception all around us.
May we honor the resonance of umwelt for its essence.
We will never know what a worm knows, how a bee travels time, how a bird feels the clouds, or what an octopus reads of dreams. We cannot know the depth of our neighbor’s ache or why our friend stays inside the story they love to tell. It’s not for us to know how a child sees the world or how our dreams guide us as they do.
The umwelt playground gives as it receives the sincerity of our unknowing.
Umwelt asks:
How deeply will you let go of trying to categorize and control how other beings know the world?
How humbly will you live in relationship with the immensity of it all?
How fully will you bow to the mystery?
How truthfully will you open your heart to the wisdoms of the more-than-human realms?
Love, Melissa
Related posts (depth-of-play series): Stay and play; Play with perspective; Contradictions are friends; Boredom is a playground
Additional Resources:
everything (essay)
A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans by Jacob von Uexküll
Theoretical Biology by Jacob von Uexküll and Doris L. Mackinnon
The View From the Oak by Judith and Herbert Kohl
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects by Lyall Watson
The Magic of the Senses: New Discoveries in Animal Perception by Vitus B. Dröscher
How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery, illustrated by Rebecca Green
Animism is Normative Consciousness, episode of The Emerald Podcast with Josh Schrei
Button Snail Hum is a pollination project of Noticing Matters.
Learn more and connect with me: melissaabutler.com | melissa@melissaabutler.com
