Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Think about how much goes on in your own body. According to AI (a quick Google search), it states, “At any given moment, your body is a whirlwind of activity, with trillions of cells, countless biochemical reactions, and complex systems working in concert to maintain life, including cell renewal, nutrient processing, and brain activity.”
This description of the body sounds like the universe. In a recent video I watched, a scientist tried to explain, in scale, how big the universe is. Our minds break down to consider it’s at least 93 billion light years in diameter, the observable universe anyway. If our solar system were to be reduced to a grain of sand, then just the Milky Way alone would be 1000 times bigger than Durham Cathedral, England.
What I find so fascinating about the significance of the universe at large is how insignificant I am, as a body. The part of me that feels autonomous and controlling, is laughable when you consider what’s going on “behind the scenes” in both the micro and macrocosm. It’s unfathomable to think that I have any kind of “influence,” when trillions of cells and “countless” biochemical processes are working in my body alone, now. Imagine that on the universal scale!
I question my sense of authority and my sense control, or what feels like free agency. If I do have some kind of freedom, it’s so minimized, it’s humorous, when the universe at large and my own body are doing more to support me than I can imagine. If I am the body, I’m impressively busy. If I am the universe, condensed, then I am utterly in awe. If I am the universe at large, I’m gone. It swallows me, and I break down. I give in. I’m free.