175: Sensation
Written February 17, 2026
Hi everyone. I hope your week is off to a gentle start.
Welcome back to our Becoming We series, where we’re exploring the three parts that make us human: body, ego, and soul. This month, we’re focusing on the body. Today, I want to talk about sensation.
When Kushal was a newborn, he—like most fresh babies—couldn’t control his hands. This was a problem because his fingernails grew at lightning speed, and the deadly combination of flailing hands and long nails meant he kept scratching his face, leaving tiny cuts on his beautiful cheeks.
Clipping a newborn’s fingernails is a terrifying endeavor. How are you supposed to trim those itty-bitty nails without clipping their skin? It feels nearly impossible. So we skipped the microscopic manicure altogether and bought those tiny newborn-sized oven mitts for him to wear.
After a few weeks, things began to change.
Instead of waving his arms reflexively, he started gaining control. One day, he noticed the little dinosaur-printed cloth covering his hands, so I took the mitts off to reveal his fingers beneath. I’ll never forget how intensely he stared at them.
I held out my hand and wiggled my fingers. He watched carefully, then wiggled his own—breaking into a big giggle.
“Yes! Fingers!” I said ecstatically.
It was a beautiful moment of body recognition filled with innocence. He felt his hands. Tested them. Experienced the world through sensation.
As he grew older, something interesting happened. He began layering imagination on top of that body awareness. As a toddler, he jumped on the couch, arms outstretched, pretending to fly like Superman. He stomped through the house roaring like a dinosaur. Body and mind were braided together.
Today, Kushal is in middle school, and I’m noticing another subtle shift. His mind and body are still connected—but our culture is beginning to reward his mind more. He’s starting the slow slide toward living in his head.
For Kushal, this has shown up as typical tween worry. The other day, on our walk to school, he told me he was nervous about an upcoming test. In his mind, he had already failed. That imagined failure led to a catastrophic chain of events—none of which were grounded in reality. So we walked and talked it through.
It turned out he didn’t understand how to convert fractions. The math was something we could work on. But the real lesson that morning was learning to recognize the false story his mind was telling. On that walk, he discovered something that remains elusive to many adults: we don’t have to believe every thought we think.
Research suggests this drifting of attention is common. In 2010, psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that people’s minds wander nearly 47 percent of their waking lives. On average, participants reported lower happiness when their minds were wandering than when they were focused on the activity in front of them—even when the wandering thoughts were pleasant. Let that sink in for a moment. Nearly half of our lives are spent in our heads.
This is why returning to the body matters.
When attention drifts unconsciously, we lose connection to the world around us. We begin to exist inside the story rather than inside reality.
Sensation is a gateway that can bring us back.
Before we were storytellers, we were sensory beings. Before we worried about fractions, we wiggled our fingers and giggled. The body is a universal language. It is what connects us—from the moment we are born—to the physical world around us.
It is also what connects us to each other.
So this week, instead of trying to clear your mind, try turning your body on.
Feel your feet on the ground. Notice your breath moving in and out. Wiggle your fingers.
Becoming We doesn’t begin in the story.
It begins here—inside the living body we all share.
If this reflection resonated with you, I’d love to invite you to become a paid subscriber. Paid subscriptions are what make this work sustainable—they’re how I know these essays are landing, how I’m able to devote time and care to researching, writing, and thinking deeply each week. If Becoming We feels meaningful to you, your support helps keep the conversation going. I’m grateful for every reader, and especially for those who choose to invest in this work.