A Cosmic Thought

By James Mills

“What’re we doing here?” I say out loud as I feel the tickle of grass on the back of my neck and the warmth of the earth under my back from my laying on the cool summer ground. “There’s got to be a reason for it.”

“What do you mean?” She says back to me, staring at me intently as I gaze out unto the setting sun, whose light juxtaposes that of the trees and refracts off of the clouds in an array of oranges, reds, pinks, and blues.

“Like I feel like the beauty of a sunset or the infiniteness of the stars isn’t by chance. I feel like, for some reason, it’s for us.” I say back to her.

“What you don’t think Nihilism has its merits?”  She asks. “How can you tell me, when we’re looking out into the vastness of the universe, that we mean anything? We’re miniscule, nothing in the eyes of eternity.”

“But it’s in our nothingness that we become everything.” I answer back.

And suddenly I am transposed into a dark void of nothingness. There is no setting sun, no chirping birds, and no dogs barking or kids playing. There is nothing but me and my thoughts. Blackness consumed me.
I stare out into this void in every which way, and it seems to shrink and expand all at once- making me both claustrophobic and agoraphobic at the same time. I become petrified as the blackness ate away at my being, making me feel hollow and empty inside- the nothingness of my environment becoming the reality of my internal being.

It is as if I am a being of pure light, my outline completely contrasting that of the darkness of my background- as if I am an inverse silhouette, a white being to a backdrop of blackness. But the blackness, in its aggression, decides to steal the meaning of my light by leading itself up my legs, down my face, until suddenly the silhouette is no longer a man, rather a slowly beating heart.

And yet, somehow I know this darkness is not eternal. That in my ability to share my light, I will regain meaning, regaining purpose. And somehow I know that sharing my light is natural, something I can do by just a single thought or breath.

With that thought, sound almost immediately fills the void- as if a gunshot went off a million times over. And suddenly, light fills the darkness as the emptiness is consumed by billions upon billions of bubbles filled with infinite specks of light, dust, and rock all spiraling around each other.

One flies by my face and I stare intently into it.

And then suddenly, I’m transported into the bubble and watch as the once specks of dust, rock, and light becomes massive in size. Watching as the debris swirl around each other forming galaxies upon galaxies of stars. I stare intently at a spiraling galaxy, whose tendrils remind me that of the Milky Way.

Suddenly I’m in the galaxy itself, watching as it matures into a galaxy I once inhabited. Gases swirl in one of its arms, forming a bright red star. And in the blink of an eye, I am watching it form up close: gazing as the gases bounce off of one another to form a mature star. Gas, rock, and debris left over start to swirl around the star and suddenly I see the planets forming. Rings form around Saturn, Jupiter becomes gargantuan, and then there’s Earth.

I watch as Earth becomes bombarded with asteroids- looking as if Earth were clay and the asteroids themselves were the hands of a sculptor. And then an asteroid is left and the moon that controls the seas is left.

Suddenly I’m in its atmosphere, and I watch as bacteria form into fish which turns into mammals living amongst dinosaurs in the tropical heat of the Jurassic era. Suddenly these animals become more ape like, their brains enlarge, and almost within seconds, they become modern man living in the icy age of rapid cooling.

They outlive the coolness and start developing. Instead of surviving, they start living: as they start to ponder their own existence, why the stars are what they are and what made them to be this way- I feel complete as I watch them exist, building and creating, just as I did when I created their bubble in the first place.

And yet, they start warring over their version of identity. Fighting over why they think I made them in the first place. I watch as they progress, learning more and more about themselves, yet still warring nonetheless-terrified of not understanding the reason that they are here in the first place, and taking this fear out on anyone that believed different.

I’m in the age Greece and the Roman Empire; and then I’m in the Dark Ages, where their meaninglessness consumed their being to the point that war replaces all progress and prosperity for their species; then I’m in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, watching as Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel; and then comes Victorian England; the American Revolution, World War I, World War II, Cold War, and then suddenly my omnipotence, power, and pure light is transported into a newborn baby, crying as it leaves his mother’s womb.

Memories start to fly by: it’s my first birthday, second, third, and then suddenly I am learning how to ride a bike, I’m hugging my parents at Christmas, I’m crying because of a scraped knee, I’m in middle school going on my first date and getting my first kiss, I’m in high school goofing around with friends, I’m heartbroken because of getting broken up with and my parents are consoling me, I’m arguing with my Dad because I need my independence, I’m in college calling my parents and thanking them for the help they’ve been giving me, I’m meeting my wife, we’re married, and then suddenly it’s us walking to the park to lay and watch the sunset having a discussion about the meaning of life.

And suddenly, its like I was watching my own eye as all of this information fills into it until I was again one with myself.

“So if you’re so smart, what do you think?” My wife says, continuing our conversation as if it never ended. “What are we doing here?”

“I’m not sure.” I say, forgetting all that I saw. “But I feel like it’s up to us to find out.”