067 Nothing Without Each Other
Hey Fig, your flowers hide inside the fruit, and only a tiny wasp can crawl in to pollinate them. You raise her young, and she gives you your seeds.
Who do we depend on that completely?
Is there someone you depend on completely?
Break open a ripe fig. Inside, hundreds of tiny flowers line the walls.
No bee can reach them. Only a wasp smaller than a grain of rice can crawl in.
What really happens
Fig flowers grow hidden inside the fig. Each fig species depends on its own tiny fig wasp to pollinate them.
The wasp lays her eggs inside some flowers, and her young grow there. Without the wasp, no fig seeds. Without the fig, no wasps.
How we know: The fig and fig-wasp partnership is one of the best-studied in ecology and has lasted tens of millions of years.
The turn
We like to think we are independent.
The fig and the wasp show that some of the deepest strength comes from needing each other.
Three takeaways
- Depending on others is not weakness.
- Some partnerships make each side possible.
- Care well for those you need.
Nothing without each other.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.