The Aptitude to Remember

Care

A plant doesn’t need to be told how to grow.

Its aptitude is already in the seed...

What it needs is the right soil,

the warmth of light,

and space to stretch… unshadowed.

Humans are the same.

We are seeded with the ability to become people…

to care, to coordinate, to keep one another safe.

These are not futuristic skills...

They are ancient ones…

covered over by asphalt and habit.

We speak of learning as if it always means something *new*.

But much of what we call learning

is really remembering.

Reactivating old capacities that were once communal —

then made obsolete… not by time…

but by systems that traded trust for transaction.

By survival taxed through disconnection.

By interest made scarce.

By harm prevention turned into enclosure.

Still…

we know how to raise a child in a circle.

How to share food without weighing it.

How to gather when the well breaks,

or the winds shift,

or a neighbor falls ill.

The aptitude is there…

waiting like dormant seeds beneath dry soil.

It’s not just that people can live beyond money…

and the other structures that divide and measure.

It’s that we already know how…

but were never shown the light.

And that we are

and can be more so ….

that light for each other.