Sex and disgust are basic, evolutionary relevant functions that are often construed as paradoxical. In general the stimuli involved in sexual encounters are, at least out of context strongly perceived to hold high disgust qualities. Saliva, sweat, semen and body odours are among the strongest disgust elicitors. This results in the intriguing question of how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all. One possible explanation could be that sexual engagement temporarily reduces the disgust eliciting properties of particular stimuli or that sexual engagement might weaken the hesitation to actually approach these stimuli.

— Charmaine Borg & Peter J. de Jong, Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Totally see it.

I was thinking back to my own childhood yesterday and one little thing that stood out was this feeling of intense happiness I got from being in motion. Running very fast, swinging real hard, sliding, rotating fast about bars — I recalled intense pleasure from doing these activities even though they were physically tiresome. And it got me thinking… why? Why did I love these intense physical activities so much as a child but not so much as an adult?

I thought about that for a bit and I think I have a plausible answer - hatred for gravity.

See, babies are floating in fluids inside their mother and are accustomed to that buoyant feeling. But once they are out in the real world gravity plays spoil-sport by literally “weighing them down”, crippling their freedom, dragging them down to the floor; they are no longer suspended in fluids that can give them that buoyant feeling. And to escape from the shackles of gravity, children, who are not yet accustomed to gravity like adults, run and jump and swing and slide. The pleasure I got from doing these activities seems to stem from feeling gravity’s hold over me dissolve away, the faster I run, the higher I jump, the harder I swing.

This is also why I think kids (and adults) love to hit the pool — freedom from gravity, just like how it was back in the womb. Also explains our love for jumping on trampolines.

Knowing what I know now, when I have kids I’m going to make sure they get as many opportunities to escape from gravity for as long as possible.

Photo credits: froodmat

Valonia ventricosa, also known as “bubble algae” and “sailors’ eyeballs”, is a species of algae found in oceans throughout the world in tropical and subtropical regions. It is one of the largest single-cell organisms.

So much life going on out there in the oceans.