Sometimes I'm reminded of the primal divinity of Being, that all these cosmic coincidences beg the same question: What was the cause?
I remind myself in these moments that there is only one ultimate answer, no matter how many scientific discoveries we may yet reveal: Something, somewhen, just is, and there is no thing that came before.
We may yet discover countless multiverses and a thousand metalayers more than that, but there will always be that superlative primacy at the end of it all.
I feel small in these moments, reminded that I am insignificant amidst these dreaming stars. I am no more likely to be given the answer after meeting my maker than the stones when they disintegrate or the stars that pop like a thousand little bubbles in the dark.
I feel small in that there is no promise that I will ever understand. By my reckoning, the promise is that no one ever can.
In some ways intelligence is a marvel of natural selection and cosmic coincidence, but the dirt is divine.
We are neither blessed nor cursed, I think, by any thinking thing. Intelligence seems to me no more significant than rivers painting canyons into the earth.
But it gives me pause to consider that the air around me, the light above me, the fingers with which I type this now are each products of something irreconcilably primal — something that came from nothing, or never began in any meaningful way.
It's like conceiving of a time before time, and grappling with the complete breakdown of reason
