I have, perhaps overall wisely, decided to make a writing pact with my friend Inés. Unfortunately, I’m bad at sitting down to write, and am down to the wire on my assignment (it’s just like being in college again!). I apologize for not writing a long and unwieldy essay about my deepest darkest thoughts; I’ll try to finish one of those in time for Christmas.
Anyways, I want to talk about the thing people sometimes say when someone is feeling stressed or worried about an upcoming event or task they have to do. Why don’t you ask her out? How bad could your presentation actually go? After all, what’s-
The worst that could happen?
The universe is your mind.
Obviously there is something out there besides you, and your consciousness. When we die the instantiated atoms that constitute you don’t cease to be. But, as I’ve tried to argue before, the reality we can interact with is entirely within our mind.
There are atoms, and light, and mass and matter, but the sense of the universe comes from within us; not from out there. Trees don’t inherently look like anything. What we see is an artifact of our cognition, and the specific senses evolution predisposed us with.
We learn and form concepts as we age and by simply existing in the world, and then through this act those notions become the world itself.
The universe is your mind.
And so what happens in your mind can shape the universe. Not just because you yourself are capable of interacting with all that light and matter. No, the stories we tell ourselves and the feelings we feel in turn redefine the texture of reality.
Of course all of this is generally constrained by all of that energy twisting itself into various ‘shapes’ out there in the wider world. And of course there are substances that can alter this general truth.
But the point I’m trying to make, ignoring psychedelics, is that the worst that can happen is pretty cataclysmic.
What happens if they laugh when you ask them on a date or you bomb that talk in front of all your professors?
Unwieldy anxiety or deep shame.
Maybe not forever, maybe not even very long. But these experiences necessarily alter the shape of the universe.
What’s the worst that happens? The universeends.
Literally explodes. And leaves you with whatever comes next.
And for the time it takes reality to reform, you are stuck in a world that is defined through terribleness, or one that no longer makes sense.
And in the end some future version of you won’t care very much about this; probably. What’s in the past is in the past.
But I guess I think we should care about things that are worth caring about, regardless of when they take place. This is why I worry about climate change or a future pandemic; even though I myself might not live to see the worst of it.
So an entire universe of terribleness existing seems like a big deal to me.
The fact this transformation can occur effortlessly, and instantaneously, and even if you are trying your hardest to stop it from happening, seems like a big deal to me.
And I guess I don’t know what this changes. You still probably have to give that presentation, and most of us want to go on dates.
But the burning of a universe, or the transformation of it into a far worse place, is scary. I think so anyways. I think that is in fact worth caring about.
And I know it’s all in your head, or our heads — but that’s all anything ever is! We are what is.
All we have is where we are. And where we are, right now, is defined entirely from within our mind.
That possibility of universal calamity seems very much like a worst case scenario. I guess I just think more people should stop and think about this before asking what’s-
The best that could happen?
My new year’s resolution was, or is going to be (once I make it to new years), to look at things more positively.
Well actually it’s to write more uplifting things. Mostly the stuff I put on my blog is depressing, and has a weird motif about death.
I’m not that bothered by how positive I currently view the world overall, moreso a bit bothered that my blog doesn’t seem to reflect that positivity very well.
But, I guess it is the case that I should care a bit more about this more general ‘positive outlook’ thing too. I just spent 600 words arguing that stress and anxiety, even if temporary, literally destroy the universe. Or at the very least reshape it into a far worse place.
But there is an opposite side to this coin.
Joy. Love. Beauty. Friendship.
These things redefine reality too.
When your crush says yes, or you wow everyone with your thesis defense, the world explodes in a different kind of way.
I guess I just think we should have more empathy for how totalizing these shifts can be. It really is, in the moment and for that person, quite and universe definingly terrible to feel anxiety or to experience rejection, or failure.
And in just the same way success and joy and companionship are universe defining experiences.
The worst case scenario is equaled in badness only by the goodness of the best case scenario.
And so, at the end of another unwieldy — and somehow even less polished — essay about my (admittedly not deepest or darkest) thoughts, I am left feeling what I often feel; confusion.
I don’t really know what to do with everything I’ve just said. What it changes, if anything.
Maybe this:
Each person is a universe unto themselves. Infinite possibilities. All the truth and beauty that could ever be lives within us; and is expressed exclusively through conscious experience. Our world is a garden. 8 billion universes just wandering around. A multiverse, contained entirely within one sphere, about 8,000 miles in diameter, which is itself contained inside an even greater whole. Layers upon layers.
Just like Shrek taught us.
And so it seems to me the course of action we ought to take is the one we already set ourselves on. When someone asks ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ they aren’t trying to make light of a situation. Not generally, I think.
They just want to help.
They want to see you happy and flourishing. They don’t want to see you full of anxiety. They don’t want to watch your universe end.
And so they’re doing the best they can.
And this is what I think we should aim to do too. We should try to fill all those 8 billion universes with joy and love and beauty. Or, at least, aim to fill a few of them. We should try to do-
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