The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.
Albert Einstein
Once upon a time there was a huge explosion and then… everything happened.
The universe is fucking magic.
Just let that sink in for a second, The Big Bang occurred and instead of destroying shit (as bangs are want to do), it birthed the entirety of existence. New shit appearing violently out of “nowhere”. Creation ex nihilo (*with caveats)! By defying the laws of physics the laws of physics were born! This is mind boggling! Absolutely outrageous! A scandal!
In stark contrast to what modern education would have us believe:
The universe is fucking magic.
It’s very easy to forget this very important fact sometimes though, and instead to become jaded and cynical. “Familiarity breeds contempt” or put in another more poetic and beautiful way: “The universe is a series of miracles but we’re so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things.”
When someone nags you for long enough you’re bound to eventually tune them out. Forgive me for employing yet another tired (“tired” because we’ve heard it too many times?) cliche, but “we often don’t notice the water because we’re always swimming in it. Etc, etc.
“Give us one free miracle and we can explain everything”
Terence McKenna, on Science and the Big Bang
The universe ostensibly is unlimited. People on the other hand, not so much. We’re bound by the limits of our own personal subjective experience (which to be fair has incredible amounts of wiggle room. Perhaps enough to encompass the entire universe, but that’s a story for another day), and physical capabilities. We only have so much bandwidth to work with. The external stimuli is potentially infinite and we are not. We can only process so much stuff at any given time. It’s perhaps a feature and not a bug of our biology then to prioritize different types of information over others.
Giraffe or hippopotami could easily pass for pokemon or any other fantasy creature, but because they actually exist, unless you’re paying attention a little of the magic of their existence can be “dispelled.” Unless we study or are particularly enamored with these amazing animals it’s easy to dismiss their ilk, relegate them to the back burner and focus on more pressing issues, like paying this months rent (don’t remind me).
I’ve mentioned this before (chalk it up under Loren’s, ahem, I mean XLTD’s greatest hits), we often operate on a “anti-Voldemort” principal. We don’t fear what we name, rather when something’s been categorized we can file it away under: I now understand this thing (or some one somewhere who’s really very smart does) so I don’t need to worry about it anymore. An explanation in our minds can easily amount to explaining away the “miracles” that we so often encounter.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Despondency, complacency and taking things for granted are choices, whether we arrive at these ends by deliberation or by default. If we’re truly honest with ourselves the fact that there is anything at all seems to defy all reason (conservation of energy and all that, as Alan Watts put it, “it would have been easier if there were nothing at all, and yet here we are.”) If we tune into to what’s happening around us it’s difficult not to be taken in by the wonder of it all. Zen Mind, Beginner’s mind. Just look at your hand; it’s a fucking trip.
So we have a story for how it all began (a beginning kind of breaks causality but so does not having a beginning, anyway another story for another day): The Big Bang. The ultimate creative act, a veritable miracle!
Now we’re here, left to wonder about life the universe and what it all means. We’ve got a decision to make. But first… “Do figs come from thistles?” as some great spiritual teacher once rhetorically asked. No, apple trees sprout apples (and apples sprout apple trees). We were born out of creativity and consequently that is now our birthright. We get to create meaning. We decide and what we choose directly effects our experience of the world.
“Life is only dull to dull people. Life is only interesting to interesting people.” It’s up to us really. Once again uncle Terence has something insightful to say: “The proper response to reality is astonishment.”
So what is our final decision? Is the universe friendly? Or Hostile? Given how the universe seems to operate, from my perspective I’d have to say it’s fucking magic.