Life’s Always Bigger Than You Think

No matter what you think you know, you've left something out.

Inevitably.

You just can't corral it all. Most of it gets away. Most of what exists, we've never really imagined was here. That's not just true on the mega scale, its also true nearby. The very local world we live in is just as dense as the rest of the universe. Everything is present in mind-boggling density.

It's not just dense, all of these events and the things they generate are constantly interacting, constantly mashing up new arrangements. Those mash-ups surge through in wave after wave, sometimes in your neighborhood, sometimes somewhere else, only to sneak back and affect you when you least expect it. Butterflies everywhere, beating their chaotic little wings in ceaseless waves of non-local interference and our surprised reaction.

We all agree to ignore that. It's simply beyond us.

Instead, we choreograph a personal dance of relevance with our own important relationships. They're just this big. They don't go beyond here, Always the same moves.

We circle ourselves in the minutia of daily life, not going out far, not going in deep. Like peasants from the middle ages, we never conceptually travel more than fifteen miles from where we were born.

No wonder we ignore it. Who can cope with the vast "what is?"

We tell ourselves we know everything we need to know about the world from the viewpoint of our personal life. Asleep at the wheel, we swipe the screen, trusting the autopilot of our own ignorance, confident that the machine with its artificial intelligence actually knows more than us. Were good.

I mean, really! I get it it.

Like you, I prefer the bite-size life: something I can keep in my pocket and pull out when I need it, always confident that I can handle it.

We ignore the great world of being, however, at our peril.

We pay a big price for thinking we're woke when we're not.

The biggest price we pay is that  we miss that we live in a creative whole as a creative whole. Life is whole and not a randomized bunch of disparate parts. They are connected. Something makes something happen and we are part  and parcel of that complex, flowing integration.

We miss that at its root, life is a cause and, because of that, at its rim, stuff happens. It causes. It happens.

We cause. We happen.

Everything's born of intent and effort and, when seen in the aggregate, those intents and efforts accumulate. Parts are parts but all of the parts are created and they all fit into one, great, integrated whole. Our life is all-of-a-piece not broken into pieces.

All of that just seems too big, too much to swallow in one gulp. But there is a way to manage this.

In your own little, local way, imagine you are the whole of the really big world acting on what's right before you. Deal with your life, detail-by-detail from the viewpoint of the all-inclusive. Imagine that. Then, act like that.

Become the creator of it all, right here, right now, smack in the midst of the tiny limitations that you need to manage. That is the basic creative act - you, the creator and your tiny, local magic act of becoming.

A creator and its tiny magic act can be as grand and showy as the opening of the Olympics or you can be almost invisible, seemingly insignificant, something we might miss, even ignore. If we exist in this cosmos, anything we touch, we transform into something else. It is one, essential act. In the big world of the butterfly effect, each creation is equally significant. Everything touches everything else.

Moment by moment by moment, the whole world is busy becoming. Its an oozing, teeming, fecund place, unbridled in its desire to be, then, becoming something else.

To see this creative world, to be this creative being is an art and life of its own - a tiny, all-inclusive mega-art where we take something as we find it and turn it into something else. Nothing lies outside this act of becoming.

You can try to stake a claim to it, fix its borders, put a fence around it, cram it in a box and keep it the same but you will suffer the irresistible effects of erosion, dissolution, evolution - autopoetic, self-emergent re-organization. It's a mess.

We are a pile of leggos waiting to be assembled, once again, into something new. So, deal with it.

As you move through it, make the most of what you've got. Get good at what you do. Find some style. Develop a little finesse.

Laugh at it. Laugh at yourself.

When you're done, ease up. Step back.

Nothing's finished. Its not over. Catch your breath.

In a moment, it's time to create again...