Day 167: I'm Not Offended if You Call me Primitive

We are all primitive creatures at heart. Those of us who believe in evolution (and really, shouldn’t we all, even if you believe in God?) might agree that we are primitive due to biological reasons, but I think most people understand we have some needs that are largely instinctual. Primitive gets a bad rap. People immediately assume it means something negative and therefore any type of primitive urge is considered undesirable. To hell with that, I am a primitive kind of woman and I embrace that in myself.

I am all instinct and usually my instincts serve me well. My urges, my gut feelings, my desires, they have gotten me this far and my life doesn’t completely suck, so I’m okay with them. For instance, I eat what I crave. I assume that most often a craving means my body must be lacking something, so if I crave a bloody steak then maybe I need the iron. Sometimes I crave salad, sometimes I crave chocolate, they can’t all be winners. My instincts led me to my husband and he’s the best person I know, so that’s a win and every now and again my gut tells me that someone I meet is either worthwhile or not, so I listen.

This is mostly how I make friends. I tend to shy away from shallow relationships and people, so it is important to me that anyone I spend time with is someone I connect with on a deeper level. You know those people you just “click” with or else have a strong aversion to? I try to like the “right” types of people, but I just suck at it. I’d love to have a large group of women friends, but women can be cagey, petty and back-stabbing so I meet less of them with whom I have a connection. I have more guy friends because I can read them better and more easily. They either want to be friends or they want to sleep with you. There is something comforting about understanding a person’s motivations. I like complicated people, but they are more difficult.

What would a world be like if we all felt more free to act on our instincts? Would we revert to animalistic behavior in the literal sense of primitive or would we actually be happier? Without the societal constraints and mandates for behavior and interpersonal interactions we might discover what we truly need to be happy and who is actually real in our lives and who has selfish or manipulative motives. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, I realize, and my instinct-based behavior makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but I try to be as real and honest as possible. I don’t need everyone to like me or to spend my life dieting to fit some arbitrary standard of beauty. I eat mostly what I want, like who is real, love who lets me and navigate the rest as it comes. Primitive isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s definitely never boring.