Happy to have teamed up once more with the Center for Humans and Nature to publish another fun essay: This one is called “Giving Up On Your Dreams.“

This piece shines a light on creatures that have taken seemingly inexplicable turns in their evolutionary histories, highlighting the fact that evolution acts without a final goal or end design in mind. Why did some birds deliberately abandon flight? Why did disparate groups of mammals all adopt insect-only diets? Perhaps to realize one way of being in this world demands that you walk away from another…

“Sometimes things in life just don’t pan out, like if all you wanted to do growing up was to fly, but fate saw fit to furnish you with bad eyes and a dose of red-green color-blindness, the sum of which can disqualify you from becoming a pilot. Grounded by such shortcomings you may find yourself commiserating with the ratites, a motley clan of birds that includes the emu, the kiwi, and the cassowary, most of whom were born sans a keel bone to hang their aerial ambitions…“

You can read the full piece over at the “Stories and Ideas” section on the Center of Humans and Nature’s website, or later as part of my upcoming collection titled Utter, Earth, which is slated to come out in this fall. I hope you enjoy it!