I got well along on my way this morning, heading for my favorite local trail for a morning walk, before I realized I’d somehow forgotten to put in my hearing aids. I didn’t pause or reconsider my plan; generally speaking, if I am alone anyway, I don’t really need them. The chronically vexing tinnitus isn’t improved by the hearing aids in any notable way, and my hearing impairment is limited to a handful of voice frequencies, mostly. It’s fine. It’s human and I’m okay with it.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

…AI doesn’t “hear” sounds, “see” sights, or actually think about anything at all. It’s a very elaborate Mad Libs completion tool. I smile as I walk. I am having this experience. I see the gray stormy looking sky and wonder what the weather will be like. I don’t check and I’m not looking for an answer. I’m just having this experience and enjoying this moment. It’s enough. I walk on, grateful for this messy weird human life wrapped in a fragile, fallible, meat suit with an unknown expiration date.

This morning I spotted a slime mold in my garden. There’s not much more to say about that. There it was, yellow and a little gross looking, but harmless as far as I know, and it will live out it’s life over days and be gone. It will live its own moment, and have its own experience. I wonder, as I walk, what the life of a slime mold is like from the perspective of the slime mold?

The Spring air smells of flowers. Roses and other sweet grassy and floral scents mingle. The air is still. Feels like it might rain today. Another thing AI doesn’t have; emotions and sensations. “Feelings”. I feel the possibility of rain in the specific type, location, and intensity of arthritis pain in my body. I feel a complicated mixed emotion of mostly anticipation, annoyance, and discomfort. Very human. This whole “human” thing has a lot of potential for profound joy (and sorrow) and feelings have to be felt – experienced – to be understood. Anything else is a facsimile (or, not even that). I can, for example, talk about the experience of motherhood, but without having experienced that myself, my words have little to offer, really. (This is also true of men writing about being women; without the lived experience, they are only observers.)

I walk awhile with my thoughts. Pretty random stuff on a Tuesday morning. I am in more pain than usual and distracting myself with my musings.

What a strange world. We don’t know what we don’t know. We’re each having our own experience. We all seem to assume everyone around us understands the world based on the same lived experience we ourselves are having. Super weird. Very human. Even the very green blades of grass along this trail may look quite different to us as individuals, and we somehow manage to share an understanding of “grass”. We are such complex and beautiful creatures. I sit with my thoughts awhile.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I have a vague sense that I was going somewhere with this, at some point… Now I’m just sort of indulging my wandering mind. I’m okay with that; the daydreams and the flights of fancy of a wandering mind are often the spark that sets ablaze an inferno of inspiration, for me. Maybe for you, too? When was the last time you simply sat with your thoughts? No phone, no screen in front of your eyes, no music playing, no “content” being consumed – just you and your thoughts and your lived experience? Worth doing.

I let the clock tick on for a little while, listening to birds and peeping frogs, and somewhere in the distance the hum and whir of HVAC. I sit considering the far distant future. If AI were to outlast humanity by some bizarre circumstance, and was asked to describe humanity…it would get so much so very wrong; it would have no lived experience by which to understand us. I hope our books and our art survive. I hope we do, too; we’re messy and weird, and violent and sometimes stupid, but we live and love and make beautiful art… I’d like to see us endure and grow into something better than we are.

I sigh to myself and get to my feet. I’m grateful to live this human experience, flaws and fears and pain and mistakes and all. I’m grateful for the opportunity to feel and experience love. I’m grateful to taste delicious food and to smell the flowers in my garden. I’m grateful to feel the trail under my feet and the breeze in my hair. I’m grateful to see the many hues of green and even to wonder if you see them as I do. I’m grateful to love and to feel my beloved Traveling Partner’s arms around me. I’m grateful for this moment, and I’m grateful to begin again, every morning, with a new day, a blank page.