First There Wasn't, Then There Was
Sean Moore
Remember this, because it is an important point: first, there wasn’t, and then, there was. Someday, soon, there won’t be.
Is that clear? I think not, for if it were, you’d close the page and run out into the world, screaming, stark-raving mad.
This is the fundamental law of the universe. There is nothing more, or less to it. Existence is the brief exception, not the rule.
There is a glass in my hand. It is cool, slick with perspiration. The volatile liquid shimmers and careens in lock step with my movements. The whole system is precarious. The slippery grip, the manner of movement. In a moment’s notice, that glass could find itself on the floor, shattered, in a heap of itself.
But of course it hasn’t - not yet at least. But surely it will, someday. Perhaps it will slip out of my hand. Perhaps it will be knocked off a counter in a moment of carelessness. Or perhaps it will be left in some cabinet, unloved and forgotten, until one day it is discarded. But what is certain is that this glass exists as a whole for only the briefest of moments. It will be a pile of shards and silicate dust, and later still it will cease to be even that. It will, as all things do, spend a far longer time not being a glass, or shards, or anything for that matter.
It isn’t a question about whether that glass exists at this moment, because that is clear. The glass has heft, weight, it has gravity and in my hand I can feel that self-evident truth, that proud declaration of existence. It is that the existence of this glass is the exception. It is that these particular molecules arranged in that particular manner will only remain that way for so long. Fate, entropy, whatever you believe - there are forces conspiring to unmake that glass and every molecule within it.
Those molecules know nothing of what greater part of a whole they made up. All they remember - if they remember anything, at all - is that one day they were crystalline structure, then they became an amorphous solid, and then again crystalline. Perhaps they too remember the binding, fiery moment that brought them into molten compliance, and the incessant howling of the wind that unbound them. But what does a molecule know of a glass, of being beloved, cherished, or even holding liquid? What does sand know of being shattered, swept away, and loved no more.
We may feel the briefest of pangs of sentiment, the tiniest tugs of remorse. We mourn, even in the smallest way, the loss of our possessions that gave us not even the briefest bit of pause just a moment before. But why don’t we mourn the grains of sand that are fired, made white-hot before being pressed, pulled, and cooled to hold the shape of the glass? Why is it anything different? For that glass to exist that pile of sand must cease to be; and yet one passes without any sentiment while the other we lament, however briefly.
What difference does it make then, of the composition of the vessel, of what it may hold? It matters not if the container is a glass, holding water or a body holding a conscious mind. In either case, first there wasn’t, and then, there was. Someday, soon, there won’t be.
Our bodies feel the pressures of unmaking even more violently. Not only are there a host of external forces malevolently aimed at us, all manners of physical and chemical agents eager to refute the nature of our existence, but our bodies themselves participate in their own undoing. Every day we lose so much of ourselves, our cells, our fluids, our thoughts, that if we weren’t engaged in an all-out race to replenish them, we would quickly wither on the vine. And even with all this starting and ending, this equilibrated making and unmaking, what makes up us knows nothing about its greater whole.
What exactly do our neurons know of our greater whole? When we are gone, in that brief instant between the end of life and the cease of function, will they reflect upon the memories they maintained, on the beautiful sensations they produced? Or will they remember nothing but the glorious ecstasy of every action potential they produced, that beautiful loop of stimulation, excitation, and electrical convulsion.
Too much fuss is made about the end of things. We note the passing of all manner of persons, or places, or objects, or ideas. We obsess over the absence of what belonged to us, of what was in our lives. We treat the end of things as if it were somehow the unfortunate exception, coming at the wrong time. But that’s precisely the reverse of reality. Absence is the constancy, it is what is inevitable, it is the rule that all things must obey. We treat the loss of something as if it were anything other than inevitable.
It is the presence of things, the connections we make with one another, that are the inconceivably uncommon. The odds of the two of us, me and you, having any sort of connection are incalculably small. We must fight tooth and nail against space and time, against physics and chemistry and biology, against all manners of entropy to exist, together, in this moment. Every fundamental law is working against our very own existence, let alone our shared connection.
And yet exist we do, connected we are. And that is truly remarkable. In a brief moment, something that by all odds could never have been suddenly becomes. Every moment thereafter that connection still exists should be a reminder that what is right here in front of us is incredible for even being.
Remember that in all that is between you and me, first there wasn’t, and then, there was. Someday, soon, there won’t be. But not now. And now, right now, is all we have.