I Could Be Wrong, But...
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Travels In My 3-Pound Universe
©2010 David Boyne
"A person starts to live when he can live outside of himself."
—Albert Einstein
Often, at random moments, including when driving a car at high speed on a crowded interstate highway, I get lost in my thoughts.
Of course, I am still there, still driving the car, but the real star of the show has gone missing. Elvis has left the building.
By that I mean this: There is a Me who is driving the car. And there is a Me who is watching Me drive the car. I am ‘of two minds’. All the time.
It is that second Me, the watcher, the thinker, the questioner— call him Me.2—who so often is disappeared.
As I pilot my way through this one forever Present, I may start out together, but at any random moment, I.2 may bail out, and I must continue driving the car at high speed on a crowded interstate highway, sans co-pilot.
If You are anything like Me, then You and You.2 are just as rarely and briefly in the same place at the same time as I.2 and I are. You.2 is always coming and going; just dropping in to show You a few out-of-focus snap shots; tell fascinating stories about people You have not met, places You have not gone, and things You have not done. Then, after a quick change of clothes, a hot shower, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, You.2 dashes off on another safari. Leaving the laundry and dirty dishes for You.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Wait. Wrong question.
Where have You.2 gone?
Over the rainbow, to a place far, far beyond the reach of satellite locators and Google Earth.
What are You.2 doing there?
Time travelling.
If You are anything like Me, You.2 goes off to do exactly what I.2 goes off to do: Ricochet like a hammered pinball among an infinite field of bumpers, each bumper a possible Past or a possible Future.
(Yes, Dorothy, you can travel through time. And you don’t even have to click your heels together three times when you want to hit the road.)
Two things to understand about these infinite possible Pasts and possible Futures: They all exist simultaneously in the one forever Present (in which I am driving a car at high speed on a crowded highway). And they all exist in one place (coincidentally, the same place where I and You, and I.2 and You.2, exist): Inside our hot little brain.
Think of that. An infinite number of possible people, places, things, and actions all packed into one steamy wet compressed grey and white mass weighing in at three pounds and carried around inside our bone-headed heads.
It’s a small world after all.
I think, therefore, I am. You think, therefore, You are.
But the place where I do my thinking and the place where You do your thinking are separate and unequal worlds.
If You are anything like Me, You do most of your living in your thoughts. (I sometimes wonder if the only reason our body exists is to bring sensations to our brain to give us stuff to think about.)
By this I mean that: From the split moment our ancestors evolved to the point of being human, there have been only two things every single human who has ever lived so far has in common. First, they have thought. Every single one of them. And not intermittently, when the mood struck, the light was right, or the passing lane open. They thought constantly. All the time. Incessantly. Obsessively. Compulsively. Until the moment they stopped thinking. Which is the second thing every single human who has ever lived so far has in common, dying.
I and I.2 have a running argument over the existence of “parallel realities.” I say they don’t exist. I.2 says, “You want proof that parallel realities exist, Bub? Simple as rhubarb pie: Go have a conversation with another human being!”
I.2 has a good point.
We each arrive on Earth packing a separate and unequal 3-pound parallel-reality-generating time-travelling-movie-projector (batteries included, some assembly required). Scientists think the movie projector is located in our frontal lobes. If true, this means when I.2 goes missing from the one forever Present, which is just about continuously, I can assume that I.2 is really still at home, ricocheting like a hammered pinball in an infinite number of possible time-space continuums, all of them spinning inside my 3-Pound Universe.
Let me ask you this: Why do we all project these infinite possible Pasts and Futures?
Let me answer you this: We do it for no better reason than to ask an infinite number of questions that all begin with the same two words, “What if…?”
“What if I do this? What if we do that? What if she did not do this, or he did not do that? What if I were to throw the spear slightly ahead of where the running Dodo bird is at the moment I release the spear? What if I run away? What if I could ride on a beam of light? What if our company applied the Ponzi principle to bundles of sub-prime mortgages?”
I could be wrong, but this elaborate projecting of possible realities seems to be a trick that only individual humans can perform. No other animals, no plants, minerals, governments, industries, or mobs—can think.
Our 3-pound frontal-lobe parallel-reality-generating time-travelling-movie-projectors (batteries included, some assembly required) would be impotently unreeling their kaleidoscopic possible Pasts and Futures inside the soundproof vault of our skulls, except for One Perfect Quirk of Nature: Spaceship Earth—is a giant holodeck.
Allow me to demonstrate.
First, what is a holodeck? It is a type of theatre in which simulated realities can be projected.
Earth is a holodeck. We, via our frontal lobes, are programmers of the holodeck. We write the script, and then we direct ourselves and everyone we can imagine in strutting and fretting upon the stage. But we do this at the same time everyone else is doing it. This results in a big dice game that is so complex and unpredictable it appears to us as intelligently designed.
Of course, I am an idiot. But for the sake of not arguing with an idiot, let’s pretend that I’m an idiot savant, and I happen to be right: Earth is an empty holodeck that we fill with our minds.
If You are anything like Me, by now You have a headache.
Which makes this an excellent time to slip in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Schrödinger's cat.
Keeping in mind that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I shall do what all idiots do, and simplify, simplify, simplify. For the purpose of this meandering essay, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle just means the act of observing something changes that something. And Schrödinger's cat just means that everything is, and ain’t. At the same time. And nothing is or ain’t until somebody observes it.
Which begs the Big Question: Why are we alive, here, now?
I spent over 40 years of my once in a lifetime Life wandering this holodeck called Earth trying to think up the Big Answer.
Then I gave up. And immediately found it.
It happened on a cloudy chilly spring day in 2005. My wanderings brought me into a conference room in a hotel in San Diego. There was a man in a wheelchair there, speaking to a rapt audience. His name was, and I believe still is, Ray Bradbury.
Ray Bradbury told everyone in that room, including me, why we are alive, here, now. He also told us what we are meant to do while we are alive, here, now.
The Big Answer turned out to be simpler than I had ever imagined.
Universe, like every child and adult inside It, wanted to be seen and wanted to be paid attention to. Universe, Ray Bradbury explained, wanted an audience. But it wanted an audience that was smart enough, and self-aware enough, to appreciate It.
Entrez nous, stage right.
We are all of us here for no better reason than to observe Universe. And by our very act of observing, we bring Universe into Being, and also change It. The rest of our job is to simply be amazed by the Show.
We are the audience. And we are in the cast. And we are co-authors of the play.
And it’s always show time.
I think.
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David Boyne's
Inner Child
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