Did Cavemen write “You are enough” on the wall?

Did cavemen kill themselves or did writing really set that off? Being useful for a brief time was much more important than being meh for a long time.

Once vocabulary and writing and pictures from across the seas showed beautiful women and paradises you could never acquire, existential pangs had more bite.

Envy was only supposed to exist within arm’s reach, so you could aspire to it in the immediate. Now it’s largely on a screen.

Did cavemen have to write on the wall “You are enough”? or did they just get killed if they weren’t? Survival of the fittest is now survival of the fantasist, able to imagine you matter in the vast realm of modern society. Able to either tune out or create a reality that is sufficiently barricaded against your own inadequacies.

Nature does help. A long hike makes thoughts hit more like a breeze than a truck thudding into a wall. Getting out of the country, or into smaller places helps. In the city seeing a beautiful happy couple makes you want to kill yourself, bing boom, action reaction. But in nature the tranquility slows the instant gratification mind that craves answers. In nature, internal inadequacy and failure grows like moss so it can be observed, a natural arc of life and death.

I’ve had chances to let my thoughts mature in quiet places, both beautiful idea trees and dogshit saplings.  I sat in the jungle in Peru with no cell service for a few weeks. The heat seared my brain. My envy/inadequacy meter reset to my group of fellow travelers and the indigenous Machiguenga living off the grid supporting us.

Do they think about killing themselves? Does their envy get bottled into small village status wars- biggest fish, fastest boat, same race different track?

They see these travelers come in with loads of money and a lifetime of experiences, but those little seeds of despair aren’t planted. They watch us struggle with the heat and mosquitos and insects the size of our feet and just giggle. The immediacy outweighs the wide world they can’t really know. Our Instagram feeds don’t mean anything when you’re shitting in an outhouse and a moth lands on your face.

But even with their minimalist life, they still huddle into the one cell service spot to watch Tiktok as their eyes glaze over. I hope they can keep the envy within arm’s reach, like our ancestors did, tied to things they can touch, smell and fight for. Work out to look like your older uncle. Have the balls to ask out your neighbor, build her a house. Don’t check your feed.