UP THE EVOLUTION

ribbit

You were once the size of a period. For a brief time you tumbled about as a multicellular sphere, much like pond algae. Currents swept and washed over you. Remember? Then you grew. You became sponge life, tubular, all gut. To eat was life. You grew a spinal cord to feel. You put on gill arches in preparation to breathe and burn food with intensity. You grew a tail to move, to steer, to decide. You were not a fish, but a human embryo role-playing a fish embryo. At every ghost-of-embryonic-animal you slipped into and out of, you replayed the surrender of possibilities needed for your destination. To evolve is to surrender choices. To become something new is to accumulate all the things you can no longer be.

Kevin Kelly, Out of Control