AGRAWAL | Dedicated to My Readers

No, not you, but let me explain. This will be my last column for a while. I've had a good run and have enjoyed communicating with you all. By "dedicated to my readers," I mean those who have edited drafts, offered ideas and inspired me; you know who you are! Among you are undergraduates, colleagues, from graduate students to senior faculty and friends and family, some of whom have patiently endured my attempts to communicate with the wider world, or at least our little Ithaca bubble. Thank you for your candor and generosity, and for indulging my stories about chlorophyll and the animals that eat it. I want to reflect on how we interact with each other, what makes us who we are and how we might move toward fulfillment. There is no perfect solution or universal answer; everybody is obviously different. And from the get-go, let me acknowledge that I speak from a position of considerable security: I have a permanent job, successful children and I am surrounded by smart people who care about me and the larger world. We should all be so lucky. Yet, there is so much bad news, so much stress and so much uncertainty, all of which can lead to despair. I certainly feel it sometimes. This can drive us to isolate, narrow ourselves and engage in transactional thinking: I did this for you; what will you do for me? At some level, perhaps we are all transactional. Still, I assume that none of us really wants to live that way. In difficult times, purpose and fulfillment become more important, even as they feel harder to achieve. Under stress, we can become shriveled versions of ourselves, and insecurity can make every interaction feel more like competition than harmonious coexistence. So what is fulfillment? It is a tall order, this desire to reach some sort of authentic satisfying potential for ourselves. We might think we know what it is, only to discover that we do not. Our desires shift; what feels promising today may not tomorrow. And insecurity - those feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and threat - may be what prevents us from fully inhabiting those desires. My thesis is simple: Insecurity, whether financial, intellectual, social, personal or existential, blocks fulfillment. Why we feel insecure, and how to resolve it, is too big to be fully addressed here. But the extent to which we can confront insecurity in honest conversations through help from professionals, friends and family, could well change our lives. In this column , I have often looked to the non-human world for insight. Most plants and animals, and almost certainly all microbes, do not feel insecure or seek fulfillment. They do not even seek fitness. Rather, those individuals with heritable traits suited to their environment pass on their traits, which then persist and shape the world that follows. Perhaps insecurity feels so pervasive because we carry old biological instincts from our evolutionary history into a modern world organized around status, purpose and self-evaluation. In nature, success is always contextual. An organism does well not by being the best in some universal sense, but by fitting its environment well enough to survive and reproduce. Every species occupies a niche, and stable ecosystems depend less on dominance than on coexistence. Problems arise when organisms are pushed out of their niche or forced into competition by any one of many disruptive forces. The band Rush captured this in their art-rock classic The Trees : the oaks and maples fight over sunlight, as if growing taller were the only goal. But a forest is not healthy because every tree grows tallest. It works because different organisms persist in different ways. So too with us. Yet we often latch onto one visible measure of success and treat it as the only one that counts. Insecurity often takes hold when we are asked to perform in roles that do not fit our skills, values or temperament, or when we start believing that someone else's strengths should be our standard. In a university environment, this happens easily and often. We confuse visibility with value; speaking the most is mistaken for thinking the most, prestige for substance, busyness for purpose. I have certainly made that mistake myself. Ecology also reminds us that thriving systems are relational. Forests are knit together above and below ground; cooperation and competition coexist without resentment or commentary. Fulfillment, viewed this way, is not demanded or negotiated; it emerges when relationships work and when differences complement rather than displace. Such a balance takes time and humility. But in the end, nature only offers fresh air, inspiration and metaphors, not moral instruction; and evolution is, of course, blind to meaning. Most organisms do not worry about legacy or purpose. Perhaps that obsession is where human insecurity takes hold. The lesson here, if there is one, may not be how to eliminate insecurity, but how to notice when we are measuring ourselves against the wrong light. We are all more or less on the same journey folks, and I am grateful to my traveling companions. Thanks to my readers. Peace, love and plants. - Prof. A The Cornell Daily Sun is interested in publishing a broad and diverse set of content from the Cornell and greater Ithaca community. We want to hear what you have to say about this topic or any of our pieces. Here are some guidelines on how to submit. And here's our email:associate-editor@cornellsun.com.