When I watch us humans, I sometimes see guinea pigs. These little bodies that suddenly jump up, dart across the enclosure, squeal as if they’ve just discovered the meaning of life—or as if it were on the verge of collapse. Both sound remarkably similar.
They react immediately. Joy, fear, food, a shadow, a sound. No lengthy deliberation. A guinea pig rejoices with its whole body. It startles with its whole body. It bolts as if there were no tomorrow—and a couple of seconds later it’s sitting there again, chewing hay. Entirely at ease again.
If I’m honest, I recognize more of us in that behavior than I like.
Sometimes we squeal out loud, sometimes only internally. We jump at stimuli. We run when something threatens or excites us. We get into conflicts with an intensity as if our life depended on it. Because in that moment, for us, everything does depend on it. Our nervous system doesn’t distinguish between cosmic importance and personal urgency. It reacts.
The universe doesn’t comment on that. It stays silent. But we don’t.
The question is perhaps less whether we are like guinea pigs – that seems obvious to me – but rather what that means. I can look at an enclosure and see chaos: nervous animals, sudden and uncontrolled movements, unpredictable dynamics. But I can also see pure liveliness. Spontaneous joy. A directness that doesn’t pretend. A body that reacts and settles back down again as soon as there is space and time.
Both are true. It is a question of perspective.
Two people in an argument sometimes remind me of two agitated animals. There is posturing, there is defensiveness, there is tension. From the outside it seems hectic, perhaps exaggerated. From the inside it feels absolute. Stimulus. Counter-stimulus. Closeness. Withdrawal. And if the space feels safe again, things calm down.
I can laugh about it—not because it would be ridiculous, but because I see the energy in it. This unbridled, sometimes chaotic movement that shows: Something is alive. There is attachment, there is meaning, there is something that matters. The laughter does not arise from distance, but from recognition.
Of course this behavior can also feel threatening. Too loud, too intense, too uncontrolled. I can try to smooth everything over, to dampen spontaneous impulses, to downplay joy, to rationalize conflicts. But then a hush enters the enclosure. But silence is not the same as maturity.
Guinea pigs do not balance themselves through arguments, but through their environment. Space. Safety. Time. Then the racing stops, without anyone having to be right. Perhaps we are not fundamentally different. Not every emotional movement needs a moral evaluation. Sometimes it is enough to simply let it pass.
I increasingly choose to see the aliveness. In others, and in myself. When I start running around in my head, when I feel joy, when I get startled or overreact, I no longer only see disorder. I see a system that works. A body that responds. A bond that means something.
Guinea pigs in the universe are not a metaphysical metaphor. Relatively speaking, they have the same significance as we do. They squeak under a sky that makes no distinction, run, get frightened, and calm down again. Subjectively, our lives naturally feel bigger. But we do not necessarily need this grandeur. Perhaps it is enough to not take ourselves quite so seriously – and to notice how much fun that can be.
Whether I laugh about it or feel threatened is less a question of the world than a question of scale. If I don’t consider myself more significant than the little animal in the enclosure, much of it loses its gravity. I’m allowed to squeak, run, get scared – and calm down again. And that’s enough.
Originally written in German.