The universe doesn’t care that you can’t control it (and that’s fine).
In an almost God-like manner, our brains like to create structure out of practically nothing. If you scribble down two dots with a line below them, you suddenly see a face. This is how keen our perception is to formulate a world around us that makes sense and seems orderly.
On a more abstract level, this is the case with even more complex things. If you have ever watched an odd surreal movie or read an equally strange book, or stood in front of an abstract painting, you probably found yourself wondering “What on earth did I just experience?”, and then began looking deeper. Before you know it, you have a theory that explains the entire movie! And yet if you ask another person, they will have a completely different point of view.
When we experience anything unusual, our instinct is to find the meaning behind it.
In a sense, this is also how we look at the sequences of events in our lives. We look back and we innevitably see structure, we see flow, we say that it was “meant to be” or that “our fate was outlined for us” and so forth.
However, this bias for meaning that we all have likes to swing far and wide when confronted with the most questionable, terrible, and destructive forces around us.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic is a great case in point. The moment the news reached us, rumors began to surface. "It's the product of a secret lab", "of a cabal of global puppet-masters", "a divine intervention", "mother nature taking her revenge", or "the after-effect of novel telecommunications technologies."
A recent survey asking "What caused the pandemic?" showed that 70% of Cypriots believed that the pandemic was due to covert laboratory research gone wrong, 5G tests, an act of God, and so forth. Only 30% said “I don't know”. Just 30%.
Let's all be honest here. 100% of us simply DON'T KNOW. There is no way any of us can possibly know, let's admit it. And yet an overwhelming 70% of us will give an opinion and stand behind it. But why is this the case, not just in Cyprus but globally? Why do humans need to have an explanation and an opinion?
The brutal truth is simple. These thoughts serve us well, because they help distract us from the single terrible cold fact of the universe: that meaningless tragedies happen for no reason and without any warning.
This is certainly a terrifying thought to harbor in mind, since it makes our existence seem so precarious and our species so helpless against the threat of the unknown and the passage of time.
And yet, I find this thought to be the most sobering of all. We DO live in a world of uncertainty. We DO live in a global culture that may fall appart at any moment. There IS a huge chance that we may live through terrible times once more, just like every generation and every individual before us.
So make the most of it. Stop looking back trying to make sense of what happened. I mean this on a personal, national, and international level. We will all be much better off if instead of looking back, we look ahead and try to make the first steps towards a life for ourselves that we can believe in. Let's stop searching for secret masters and secret saviors. These endeavours will get you nowhere.
Some of you might say that this last comment is not a particularly religious point of view and dismissive of God. I implore you to read the Book of Job or Ecclesiastes to see that this is not just a humanist point of view, but a profoundly ancient and human one.
We need to open our eyes and see that all we need, and ultimately all that we can ever have, is already in our grasp – ourselves and each other. So let's acknowledge that we may live in a world where we cannot control everything, however we can control ourselves and our reactions. And if we can do that, we can face anything.
