September 25, 2003

Navels

A once and dear friend of mine had a remarkable way of putting things in their place. With a mere aside, he’d say, “that’s about as useless as an extra navel.”

That simple phrase always struck me as a most thorough of put-downs. I cannot imagine anything so terminally unique that even a simple duplicate would be, so to speak, terminally redundant.

Early on in life, I suspect that most of us were not simply curious, but also circumspect about navels. If they were to be regarded at all, such concern remained private and relegated to the growing list of all the curiosities of childhood. Later on, we would learn that “navel-gazing” was society’s synonym for “goofing off,” the worst of all crimes against the Great American Work Ethic.

What a simple, insignificant little dofunny, smack dab in the middle of everybody, obviously, we would learn, oblivious to all the sexual distinctions and conflicts we make between ourselves, completely impartial to left brains and right, quiet, unassuming, rarely getting any attention at all save the occasional visit from an industrious chigger.

But the truth is we could learn a lot from navels, not only what an essential function they represent, but now that we don’t seem to need them at all, how they may be more important than ever.

For what, indeed, in our complicated anatomy could be a more important reminder of what being human is all about?

Environmentalist claim that everything on this planet and more than likely in the entire cosmos is connected in one way or another. The chaos math people tell us that even when a south Pacific butterfly flutters by, a frontal system over middle Where’sit suffers a mild shudder in one way or another.

Lewis Thomas, the perceptive biologician, suggests that if the planet earth is like anything at all, it is most like a living cell. I don’t recall his saying so, but if the earth is so alive, perhaps even it has a navel, as well.

So far as I know, nobody’s ever found one, but it’s not a bad idea. It’s probably in a place heretofore undisclosed or perhaps deliberately obscured and protected with other weapons of mass construction.

But come to think of it. the Big Bang being what it was (or is) suggests its own kind of connectedness, a kind of cosmic navel where the whole universe once got its nourishment and DNA instructions to go ahead and do its thing with a careful eye for the living commonwealth of everything, so much so as to make sure all the rest of us got our own personal reminders.

One navel each, though quaint and though plenty, yet possesses infinite value. Perhaps it might be a kind of anatomical icon recalling the words of the ancient prayer — “keep us ever mindful of all the changes and chances of this mortal life” — the one essential, unique, and simple reminder that somehow we are all irretrievably connected. Maybe navel-gazing’s not such a waste of time after all.

ps. Whether or not Eve and Adam had one is a question best left to the neo-natal theologians.

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