The desire for social structures that celebrate otherness can be investigated empirically through the analysis of the grammatical structures of participants’ accounts of their social worlds. —Jodie Clark, Selves, Bodies and the Grammar of Social Worlds

The experimental planets are like new strains of exotic plants cultivated in a greenhouse. Earth is one of those rare plants. Imagine it being lovingly observed and tended to by a wise, attentive Botanist.

You believe your name is Rosie (short for Rosemary), and that you’re a middle-school kid who keeps getting bullied. The Botanist believes you are much more—that you carry deep within you the secrets to whether the experimental Earth will thrive.

Imagine he’s gazing hopefully into his microscope now, like he’s focusing on a plant cell, but the cell is your life. Imagine he’s talking to his Apprentice.

‘Aren’t the toxicity levels unusually high?’ worries the Apprentice.

‘For Earth, these are pretty normal,’ sighs the Botanist.

‘What’s causing it?’

‘Names. They’re calling her names.’

He means the other kids in your class.

‘I wouldn’t have expected those names to bind,’ says the Apprentice, confused. ‘They’re not a match for her true name.’

When the Apprentice says ‘her true name’, he doesn’t mean ‘Rosie’ or ‘Rosemary’. He’s referring to the unique linguistic sequence that defines every self.

It’s kind of hard to explain.

What the Botanist knows about Earth is hard to explain, too, but he tries it anyway. It’s important that the Apprentice understand.

‘The language sequence that defines Rosie and her species is not native to the planet they’re inhabiting,’ he says. ‘As a result, their linguistic signatures are…’ He searches for the right word. ‘Vulnerable.’

What the Botanist and the Apprentice take for granted is something that to you would seem a great mystery. All worlds, and all that’s in them, are made of language. All things come into being from the midst of their unique linguistic signatures.

‘The Earth is an experiment in grafting,’ the Botanist reminds the Apprentice. ‘The language that defines the members of Rosie’s species has been spliced into the Earth’s originary language.’

‘I see,’ says the Apprentice. He watches with sorrow as the cruel names continue to penetrate the weak boundary of Rosie’s personhood. He observes the sequences that have emerged in response from within the language of her thoughts. I’m so stupid. No one likes me. I wish I didn’t exist.

‘Is there anything we can do?’ asks the Apprentice. There’s worry in his voice.

‘Watch and hope,’ replies the Botanist. ‘That’s about it.’

The Botanist actually does more than watch and hope, but his methods are too unconventional to share. At night, when the greenhouse is empty, he returns to the microscope and whispers his messages to you.

‘Hang in there, Rosie. We’re pulling for you. You matter to us.’

On the nights when his voice resonates enough to pierce through your veil of tears, you hear his words. You draw them up through your roots like a thirsty flower.

Would you like to know more about this story? Watch the video I made about it. I also discuss ‘The greenhouse’ in Episode 65 of Structured Visions.