The Prodigious Picture: Day 24

[B] A detour (24,439 / 1,000,000)

There are two types of people in this world: those that are willing to characterize all people into two distinct groups, and those that are not. In other news, have you heard that 100% of people who drink water, eventually die? Crazy.

I’ve always considered myself a curious person. You could say that my interest in reading and writing is merely a symptom of my curiosity disease. Curious people are a rather straightforward bunch, they just want to know or experience everything. Not truly everything, of course. I don’t want to experience what it feels like to get a tattoo on my eyeball. Although, now that I mention it, I wonder what that feels like… ouch.

A side effect of experiencing anything is that the more you experience, the more your proverbial “bigger picture” gets even bigger. This is usually considered a positive thing. For one thing, when you incorporate more information into your decision making, you make better decisions. A few close calls while driving on the road will teach you to check your blind spot before you switch lanes, to use an example. Not only is experience beneficial in decision making, but it gives context for things that would otherwise confuse you. Like when I learned that fluctuating temperatures outside can affect your tire pressure and cause your tire light to switch on and off periodically. I definitely wasn’t in a confused rage about that for two weeks last winter… No way.

That being said, nobody ever talks about one of the major negative consequences of expanding your worldview. As your worldview gets larger, damn do you get small. Average people like you and I - we don’t turn the tides of history one way or another. We don’t impact the story arc of humanity in any significant way. Most of us won’t even be remembered in a few hundred years, and the rest will be forgotten in another few thousand years. The impact that we have on our surroundings is so laughably miniscule, that if any one of us disappeared this instant, the vast majority of humanity, the planet, the galaxy, the universe - would all continue on without a blip.

But (BIG but), none of that matters. We’re animals, after all. We’re a hop, skip, and a jump from scrabbling around naked in the dirt, hiding from predators. From an animal’s perspective, the world isn’t too big. A dog doesn’t worry about the impact it has on dog-kind. It doesn’t worry about affecting the greater narrative of all dogs around the globe. A dog’s world ends at the furthest extent of its vision. Or at the reach of its nose, I don’t know how dogs work. As animals, we have stunning impact on our surroundings. A small band of humans, armed with technology, can literally build a village - carve out a piece of the world into a shape that suits our needs. We’re actually a little too good at that, collectively. That’s how we get all those extinct species and the whole ice caps melting and all that.

What is the point of all this, you may ask. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s mostly because I’m doing this challenge thing where I’m trying to write a million words over a few years. But also because, existence can get a little… spooky. Whether consciousness is a divine gift from above, or a quirky side effect of our meat-code (that’s what I call DNA), it’s clear that we were not provided with all the tools necessary to cope with being aware. It’s not just me, right? If you could somehow convey to a pigeon that it was one of billions of pigeons on a rapidly spinning ball, which is one of billions of spinning balls in a spinning disc of spinning balls, which is one of billions of spinning discs of spinning balls… you get it. The pigeon would be bewildered.

We’re granted the capacity to realize that we’re in a place and stuff is going on, but not the capacity to know why, and that’s goddamn annoying. Why is the most intriguing of the five W’s, after all (shout out to Day 10). Suffice to say that there needn’t be a why, and that even if there is a why, it’s out of our grasp at the moment. This is where someone would tell me I need Jesus, if there were people around to do so. I appreciate that religion is an avenue for acquiring a why, but it’s not one that puts a stopper in my why black hole. Every time I tried getting into the whole religion thing, I ended up with more whys than when I started, but we’re not here to talk about that.

As a matter of fact, we’re here so that I can chip away at this mountainous debt of words that I for some reason issued to myself. And since I had the brilliant idea of posting these online for all to see, I feel a sense of impending guilt as the day goes by and I don’t pop open this tab and start typing. I feel the words calling to me as the hours tick by, “Michaeeeel. You haven’t written us yeeeet. Did you think you would be productive today? Silly child. Come, write some random bullshiiiiiiit”. That’s pretty much how it goes.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah - when your world is large, you are small. But when you filter out like 99.99% of the universe, things get a little easier. Is that just being present? Damn, I wrote all that and people are like “yeah dude, that’s why I meditate for ten minutes every morning, get it together..”. Ah well, some of us are slower than others, and if you factor in our insignificance, what does it matter? Dammit, I’m doing it again! Ah well, stay safe, live in the present, and if my calculations are correct then I’ve…

Totally nailed it,
Michael