The Chaotic Universe

Hi, hi, hi!

What're you doing right this second?

One thing? Ten things?

Are you feeling calm and focused, or chaotic and wild?

I find myself flipping between the two, ever so often, with very little middle ground.

But hey - the universe is entropy, no?

One of the most sacrosact laws of our existence is that in any closed system, entropy increases. That might be any small closed system in a lab, in our lives, or the entire system of our entire frickin' universe.

So. Yeah. THE CHAOS IS REAL!

I was reading this week about Karl Schwarzchild. He was a physicist/astronomer and basically the first person to hypothesize the existence of black holes. Feel free to go down a googlerabbithole of blackholes and infinitesingularities, if you dare!

As he was teaching and researching and publishing prolifically, the first world war was approaching. Of course, many (all) folks had some sense of impending doom around this time, but Herr Karl's particular fear was that physics would not be able to explain the unexplainable universe. He writes:

"Is there anything that is truly at rest, something stationary around which the universe revolves, or is there nothing at all to hold on to amidst this endless chain of movements in which every single things seems bound? Just imagine how far we have fallen into uncertainty if the human imagination cannot find a single place to lay its anchor, if not a single stone in the world has the right to be considered immobile!"

Which is to say, it is so very human and natural to fear the unknown.

We all counter that fear in our own ways.

His was formula after formula after math after science, trying to concretely make sense of it all. For some like him, it's science. For some, it's religion. For some, it's falling into the chaos of self-destruction or diseases of addiction.

This sh*t is real.

If I'm being honest about my life choices, I'd say I've tried out almost every available antidote to entropy.

(yikes)

And here is where I landed: there isn't one.

Wah-Wah.

Yoga and meditation practices help us embrace and (gasp) maybe even enjoy this truth.

We sit with what is. We learn how to breathe in the middle of the storm. We breathe, we breathe, we breathe, we remember that everything changes, our bodies are different every single moment, we can't control what happens around us, we face the hard truths rather than running from them, and we breathe, we breathe, we breathe.

This universe doesn't really care what happens to us.

Which gives us freedom to be a little less worried about the universe.

Which means: we can attune to this day, this moment. The people around us. The world we live in right now. It is chaos and it is wild and embracing all of it doesn't have to be scary. It can mean that each little thing we do to make even one person's life more whole MATTERS.

If we can let go of the idea that the whole worlduniversemultiverse will ever make sense, let go of the idea that we have to (or ever could) figure out how to make the whole world a better place, then we have the freedom to do small things. And small things matter.

Have you ever noticed that in any time traveling story, people get super worried about how changing even one tiny thing could mess with the entire course of history??

AND STILL, we tend to forget about how we're living through history and changing even one tiny thing today could, in fact, "mess with" the entire course of the future.

So. I dunno. Do something kind. Help a person. Speak up.

And breathe, and breathe, and breathe.

And remember: your time on the mat matters. It matters for you, and it makes a difference in the world. Awareness. Discomfort. Facing the hard. It matters. You matter.

(if you want another fun sidenoterabbithole, THIS RESEARCH is super cool, on how meditation actually increases entroyp in the brain, which has a similar effect to psychedelics, which can sometimes be similar to mental illness but also can sometimes be linked to higher intelligence and also all of the above at the same time probably)