It takes time… and it’s been slow 🙃 - the Musings of Moko Bi
Hi. You may call me Moko Bi.
These are my musings.
The human timescale is infinitesimal in comparison to continental and planetary timelines. They say Africa is moving towards Europe, at a rate - which is imperceptible to human senses - of 2cm a year. Simultaneously towards the east, Africa is also splitting up at the great Rift Valley.
Non of these geological activities will conclude for millions of years... with no witnesses from today’s human inhabitants of the planet. In the grand time and activity scales of this rock we call earth, millions of years is nothing but a blip.
AND
It sure does make me feel insignificant and never mind my irrational feeling of FOMO ( fear of missing out )
SO… I ask,
When did we start thinking about our origins?
When did we start thinking about how we came to be?
When and why did we embrace religion?
With all the noise, hype and discoveries coming from the James Webb Telescope era, I recently started pondering some of these questions again. Research teams are discovering at break neck speeds - the furthest this and the farthest that. The whole idea that humankind is now staring at lights that have been traveling for billions of years from sources that are billions of lights years away is just boggling. 🤯
“SO… If everything that’s makes up the cosmos today, originated from that singularity, then that makes me 13.8 billions years old. On account that the atoms that make up me, are that old and they have simply been in and out of other forms/materials before they ended making me at my inception.”
This got me into a rabbit hole - spiraling in my imagination towards what they say would have been 13.8 billion years ago - the beginning of the universe.
A singularity - an unimaginably tiny point full of everything that will ever be, and un fathomable-y hot, banged it’s way into unimaginably rapid expansion that was extremely brief but spewed enough space dust to seed the universe as we now know it.
Of course the gargantuan elephant in this initial black void, begs the question… whence did this singularity appear or perhaps even more crucial… did the bang self inflate? Or was there an external causality?
The more I look up into the universe the less inconsequential life on this rock seems. It sometimes feels like to be human is to be bogged down by the many things that do not universally matter (is there a pun here to be intended or not? 🤔)
There is a sense of marvel and wonderment, when I look at what humankind has been able to tease out - with regards to its origins, the nature of observable space and its boundaries or lack thereof - and to do all that inquiry from the unimaginably imperceptibly small and lonely perch that is this rock we call earth - in what we now know is the vast gargantuan universe. Truly remarkable and testament to the human spirit. Perhaps a counterbalance to the equally destructive and wasteful nature of humankind 🤔.
SO…
I am still spiraling through my rabbit hole and I got plenty more questions! Like…
If space is expanding… what is it expanding into? If the origin was a singularity? What did it inflate into?
Did space-time, dark matter, and dark energy also emerge from the singularity that ‘banged’ into the expanding universe we have now?
SO… If everything that’s makes up the cosmos today, originated from that singularity, then that makes me 13.8 billions years old. On account that the atoms that make up me, are that old and they have simply been in and out of other forms/materials before they ended making me at my inception.
We live in a universe that we see, feel, taste, hear and smell only a small fraction of what makes it up… everything else is in the dark… matter and energy. That’s just freaky!
MEANWHILE…
…back here in my everyday. How am I doing you ask? After all, I have this serious case of pandemic triggered OCD and mental anxiety issues that has been in overdrive for the last couple years!
So how am I? I think I have made progress atop my last progress. My new bench mark for measuring my progress is, spontaneity. How quickly do I plunge into things that have made me feel uncomfortable and are previously known OCD triggers.
So trusting the prevailing science as much as comfortable, and cutting down on my OCD pre work while dismantling my inbuilt redundant safety and comfort measures. Well it takes time.
So, in my new milestone in recovery, I welcomed a guest into my most intimate living spaces for the first time in a couple years! No pre work, no masks, no nothing!
But that’s a whole other muse! 🤓