The Simplicity Underlying Your Complexity

You are simple and complex

Simple, yet complex. Spring raindrops on poppy and mizuna leaves at Evergreen.

There is a simplicity underlying the complexity of the universe.

There is a simplicity underlying the complexity that is you.

I’ll tell you what that simplicity is.

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I google for the latest scientific discoveries about the universe. It’s fascinating and overwhelming. The universe is expanding every second because of a mysterious force called dark energy. A large-scale void has just been found along with bizarre stars, supermassive black holes and lots of dark matter (not to be confused with dark energy).

I won’t be around long enough to comprehend all the stuff beaming from Hubble and pouring down massive telescopes into human eyes.

When I lie in bed and muse on the scary fact that I, a complex speck composed of blood, flesh and bone, am here on a rotating and spinning planet in an infinite universe of such magnitude that scientists admit we know less than 5% about it, and it’s moving so fast away from us that as time goes on we’ll know even less, I wonder what I mean in the context of all that is.

The only answer I can come up with is that, ultimately, I mean nothing.

As time goes on, I suspect scientists will find that the universe is even more complex than they realise today. But no matter how much complexity is revealed in the future, I have one thing to say. It may seem trite, but here it is:

We’re all in this together,

whether we’re the newest exploding supernova

or the latest baby born.

At its simplest, everything that exists is one “thing”.

When I lie in bed and muse on that, life isn’t scary anymore.

Complex and yet simple. A sea of lavender at Evergreen.

I won’t be able to travel to the latest dark void. I’ll never get up close to an exploding star. No rocket will whizz me to Mars. But, at the moment, I am privileged to be here, a part of it all.

I’m not here to explode. I’m not here to be dark. I’m not here to move away as fast as I can.

So, what am I here for?

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton said something like, what’s the point of going to the moon if we can’t cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves. And, I add, the abyss that separates us from other people and everything else.

The simplicity I promised to point out is that everything is one, every thing is held within oneness.

And I’m not here to create or maintain abysses.

I’m here to create a bridge between myself and other people and other things.

In fact, I’m here to stop living as if there is an “other”.

I am held within dark matter, black holes, dark energy, supernovas, voids.

Oneness. Oneness. Oneness.

It’s the sound made by the symphony of the spheres.

We're both simple and complex.

And we’re all in this together.

With love, Marlane