In observing nature, you become attuned to impartial determinism. In the right conditions, a plant will reach its appendages up and up with disregard to what surrounds it. As long as there is room to grow, it will. Its call and response are obedience without thought, though thoughtful and elegant it may seem.
When the sun strikes the plant, a growth hormone called auxin accumulates on the shaded side of the plant, elongating its unlit cells. Water travels to the cells by way of osmosis, chasing an invisible equilibrium. The plant flexes its elongated cells, swelling and bending towards the light. There is no ambition here, just the push and pull of charged particles setting off cascades of motion.
Given the right ingredients, the growth of the plant is inevitable. It does not wonder if the sun is worth chasing before stretching towards it.
Similarly, we respond instinctively to the things that give us energy. Maybe the difference between us and the plant is that we give these things names: passion, agency, purpose. But on the micro level, does the same cascade drive the art we create, the communities we gather, the media that lives viscerally in our memories?
Maybe our call is the knot of energy in our stomach at a new idea, the sharp scent of the outdoors after rain, the feeling that someone understands you, a lingering glance at something beautiful. Millions of data points — memory, context, emotion — that we shape into meaning.
Maybe our response is to make sense of these signals, to give them form through language, visuals, stories, to inspire the call in others.