Todd was monaloging at you again.
“This is how I see it. My heart doesn’t know why it pumps. My heart doesn’t care, it just does what it does. And maybe, who knows, on some microscopic level, in its atoms, or in the atom’s atoms, it is searching for an answer. Maybe at night I dream about that guy with no face shouting, not because of my subconscious slash conscious desires but because it’s a manifestation of my molecular structure’s search for meaning as it transports, transforms, and uses protein strands.
“Far fetched, off topic, but who knows, right?
“Well, in the scheme of the universe I’m not even my heart. I’m not even an atom, you know?
“But my heart plays a vitally important role to me. If my heart stops… I’m in trouble. I care a lot about my heart, but my heart will never know.
“Be it God, the Universe, Life, whatever — lets call it purpose.
“We are the cogs. Douglas Adams has this sort of… Quantum physics thought problem in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. He tells this story of a man who gets nagged by his wife, sometimes 38 times a day, ‘Henry, Henry!’ She says, ‘You have no sense of proportion.’
“So, this guy Henry, this lazy inventor: he works up this contraption with all theses sensors to find the exact location of a particle in a piece of cheesecake, and since he has the exact location of that particle, he can say, it can only be in that place because it’s pushed upon by ‘X’ forces. And because he has the exact location of these forces, due to the original cheesecake particle, he can extrapolate that data and see to the ends of the universe.
“Not really a doable experiment due to the fact we can’t find the exact location of an atom, or if we did, we wouldn’t know its trajectory… let alone issues of superposition… but an interesting idea nonetheless,” Todd took a breath.
“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Then Todd kept going, “Henry sets this thing up and has his wife get inside. She immediately dies.
“When faced with the immensity of the infinite universe, when she saw all the ends of the never ending heavens, then looked back at the tiny little dot that read, ‘YOU ARE HERE.’ She couldn’t take it. No one could.
“And just like the Downs Syndrome child has just one messed up peptide bond, or ABU, or whatever happens to give them that extra chromosome — I mean something so stupidly small — we are smaller than that, in comparison, and somehow just as important.
“Man, I can’t ever know what my purpose is in the scope of the universe, but I’ve seen the small crush the big, and fuck, I’m a cog, but the cogs are important. I don’t know why the universe needs me driving up 71, getting off at 11th in a Honda Civic, shooting out pollution, talking to you about this stuff, but I’ve seen slash read enough about the way things work to know that there aren’t too many mistakes out there.
“And at the same time, it’s comforting to know how small you are. How insignificant. You don’t have any responsibility; there are checks and balances to clean up whatever mistakes I make. The heart is important to a structure, but it’s not overarchingly important to a system. God, I have purpose inherent in my existence, and inherent in my mistakes. But I have freedom from that purpose too. If I mess up, the cleaning crew will fix it, because without that, it could get crushing. I don’t know what my purpose is, but its vitally important. That gets heavy. That sets you on the search again. But just like your heart, you don’t need to know. You’re a heart, man, you pump naturally.”
You love Todd because now it’s your turn to talk Midwestern, philosophical-prophet stupid about the profound mysteries of the universe.
The song on the radio croons, “My conscious is burning. I’m such a coward, these wretched things I do.”
Writing is the wretched thing I do. Gastly, yearning to be greater and more profound than it is. Without you interpreting it, adding your own experience and translating it into something new, it is wasted. But you read it, made it to the end, and your attention is valuable. Follow me and I’ll send you a little note of thanks along with a gift.
