Have you ever stopped to think about your existence? The seeming fact that you are you? That you are somewhere? That you came from somewhere and appear to be going somewhere; moving along a path some call life, or living?
Have you ever really thought about these things? Really, really thought about them?
No, I'm not asking if you place your faith in a certain religion or if you adhere to a particular philosophy or school of thought. I'm not asking for you to recite the dogma of your church or your coven or fraternity.
It's a simple question, and I want to know the answer: Have you ever stopped to think about your existence?
A boring subject you say? Not as interesting as reading a book or watching a movie? No point in it? Why should one think about something so obvious, you ask?
Is it obvious? Wonderful! If existence is indeed obvious, then no part of it is concealed from your understanding. In that case, there really isn't much point in your thinking about it any further.
I am not so wise or blessed.
In fact, I find existence to be the most terrifying subject of all. And while it may indeed appear to be obvious, I am not sure many of us understand existence even a little.
There is abundant evidence that we, along with many other things, exist. And while this so-called fact does seem simple and obvious, I can't quite seem to get a handle on it.
For example, we seem to exist on a planet in a solar system that's also part of a galaxy that is itself nestled within a universe. I don't know where the edge of this universe is. I'm not at all sure what exists beyond that edge or boundary.
Just how far does existence go? Surely it must end somewhere? There must be a border beyond which nothing exists. I mean, existence can't just go on forever, can it? If something could fly beyond this universe and all the other universes that might exist, where would it be?
Can there really ever be anything that simply never ends, like a road that just keeps on going forever?
Just how big is existence? And speaking of big, just how small is it, too?
Is that terrifying or what?
I mean, there was a time when you looked at water and all you saw was water. You looked at dirt and all you saw was dirt. Then, along came magnifying glasses and then microscopes and then electron microscopes and who knows what else. Each one brought us more worlds within worlds within worlds.
A drop of water holds an entire universe. Maybe universes within universes, and so on.
What a terrifying thought that can be. Because it leads me two wonder just how big or how small anything and everything really is.
Of course, you already know, since existence is obvious to you. But remember, I'm not so blessed. I'm still mollified by many aspects of existence and relative size is one of the most terrifying of all.
What if the Earth is really just the size of a drop of dew on a blade of grass in some swamp in the middle of a rainforest on some planet a hundred trillion times larger than the universe we know?
I've had that very fear every time I gaze into the sky on a sunny, cloudless day and realize that I am looking up, or maybe down, into infinity. And there doesn't seem to be much in between. Like if gravity suddenly quit, I'd begin to fall and fall for a very, very long time.
Maybe forever.
It gives me a severe attack of acrophobia, just thinking about it. I imagine myself falling upward into the endless void of space, much like a terrifying nightmare in which I fall from a cliff so high I can't even begin to see the canyon floor, lost somewhere in the blue mist far below. I can feel is the wind rushing past my face as I silently scream in frozen horror.
Imagination can be a terrible thing. Superstitious people are very careful about what they imagine for fear that it will come true.
Wait.
That's the answer, isn't it? For on this day, the blind shall be made to see, the deaf to hear and the lame shall be made whole! I see the light and it is terrifying to behold!
There really were no worlds within worlds until we imagined the possibility of their existence! No universe actually existed beyond our galaxy until we created it within our dreams and revealed its existence through the eye of the telescope.
If this indeed be true, then once upon a time, we imagined ourselves imagining the existence of all things both great and small. So It Came To Pass That All Of Creation, For All Time To Come, Would Endlessly Become What We Ourselves Imagine It To Be.
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