Following a nine-month (or so) gestation, birth is our first big “yes” to the lifespan. Many more moments of yes will follow. The body says yes and the mind says yes to our newborn human life. Our cerebellum doubles in volume by three months. The number and density of brain synapses (connections between neurons) grows in dramatic affirmation of our mental potentials.

But then negation comes in the form of synaptic pruning, a cutting away of less used connections in favor of making fewer stronger ones. Yes, no, yes…

We could notice the ebb and flow of yes and no through the years, and even in the moments of our lives from the very start. Babies are a symphony of yeses and nos. A cacophony sometimes.

Think of it, consciousness placed in our tiny selves (the first yes?) as we womb float and then crunch through a canal into a human life, crying “No” all the way! We learn to move, then move to learn. And we start thinking, not in words at first, but in sensory and motor intelligences or schema. Words are learned as we go and added to the mix.

At the center of thought (and actually created by it) is “me”. The infant’s myriad of experiences begins to have a constancy and predictability in a world that truly does seem to revolve around “me”. We are called by a name. My name.

So perhaps there is a second gestation of say 1-24 months. After all, it is said that a sense of “me” is formed over those first couple of years. An ego. And it begins not with a yes but with a resounding NO! No I am not you, I am me! That is not yours, it is mine! For the toddler, no truly comes before yes.

This brand new “me” is glorious and seems to include you and, well, everything. As marvelous as that sounds, it is also pretty scary and feels massively out of control.

Toddlers are big on control.

That brand new me needs external limits set consistently and with love. Thus, the ego is protected, contained and at least partly stabilized toward autonomy. Children need those external boundaries that model the internal ones they will erect. Boundaries, inside and out, hold the “me” and prevent the “you” from swallowing me. Children could learn to trust trustworthy others and begin to feel safe in their world.

What then? Growing up, we all start to believe in “me”; in its solidity and reality. Each sensation and perception and thought is mine. And it is all “me”, an illusion increasingly understood as a function of brain regions dedicated to the theme of my mind; my body.

There is little doubt as to the survival value of higher cortical functions like planning, tool making and language in its various forms. And we should put the individual, the ego, in that same category of evolutionary advantage. The illusion of a “me”, separate from everything else, is an adaptation that gains momentum over our lives.

But maybe, at this juncture of human history, the advantage is disappearing.

It seems that after several hundred thousand years, more or less, our individualism has developed to the extreme. One could argue that besides reason, love and empathy, we have all become masters of poisons like greed, hatred and ignorance in ten thousand forms and ways. Modern economic systems, armies and media all seem to double-down on those poisons.

What to do?

Maybe recognize what we forgot long ago or never fully understood. That my thoughts do not come from me, but rather, a me-illusion develops from all my thinking (and emoting and perceiving). But I am not my thoughts. Illusions and opinions should not be taken too seriously. With that a fluidity emerges…a flow. Like a river that is always the same and never the same and where egos evaporate. The river sound holds our collective experience, every yes and every no of everyone.

Listen: Flow.