in a world that does not pause for us, we pause for each other

making meaning in a universe that doesn’t care: on the multiverse, cosmic insignificance, and the absurdity of it all

“for most of our history, we knew the earth was the center of the universe. we killed and tortured people for saying otherwise… and now look at us, trying to deal with the fact that all of that exists inside of one universe out of who knows how many. every new discovery is just a reminder we’re all small and stupid.”

— evelyn & jobu (a.k.a. joy, in her fractured form)

there’s a scene in everything everywhere all at once where time and space come to a halt. there’s no sound, no movement, just stillness. two rocks, weathered and silent, sit at the edge of an indifferent canyon, gazing out into nothing. the earth beneath them is unyielding, and the sky above, endless. they are suspended in a universe that doesn’t pause for them, that doesn’t need them to exist. and yet, in that silence, everything is said. in that space between them we can see how small they are in a world that doesn’t care.

the more we learn, the more we discover about gravity, quantum fields, and galaxies, the more we realise none of it centres us. we are not at the centre of the solar system, or the universe. not even, perhaps, at the centre of our own lives. and that realisation, despite the beauty of discovery, leaves us staring into an empty void. a void that, the more we peer into it, seems only to deepen our sense of insignificance. the universe we find ourselves in is vast, indifferent, and quite possibly infinite, our place in it, a mere speck of dust lost in the infinite expanse of time and space.

scientifically, there’s plenty we do know, and even more that we don’t. we know that, as humans, we’re not at the centre of the universe, as once believed. with the discovery of the heliocentric model and the vastness of space, we were dethroned. we know now that our existence is temporary, our sun will burn out, our planet will die, and the universe itself will eventually end in one form or another. there’s no grand purpose, no grand design beyond the natural processes that allow us to exist, momentarily, before we fade.

the multiverse theory is one of the most intriguing possibilities we have. is it real? we don’t know. it remains a theory, a possibility born from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and string theory, among others. one of the more popular interpretations, the inflationary multiverse, comes from our best understanding of the early universe: cosmic inflation. this theory suggests that before the big bang, space expanded at an unfathomable rate. in some versions, inflation never ended, but continues in different regions, with each collapse of energy creating a “bubble” universe. ours is just one of those bubbles. some theorists suggest that universes are still being created, right now, in the silence beyond ours. there could be infinite bubbles, infinite variations.

we don’t know if the multiverse exists. it’s one interpretation, elegant, suggestive, unproven. but the deeper question isn’t just whether it exists. it’s what it means for us, here and now. if there are infinite versions of you, infinite paths your life could have taken, what does it mean that this is the version that came into being? this body, this timeline, this sentence. what does it mean to exist in a universe that does not centre you? in a reality that offers no guarantees, no promises?

the fact that there is so much we don’t know, about the size of the universe, the true nature of time, the possibility of infinite worlds, means that we are constantly confronted with our own limitations. there is comfort, and horror, in the unknown. we can calculate the trajectory of a comet, but can we grasp the enormity of the unknown? can we truly understand our place in something so vast, so undefined? no, we can’t. and still we try.

“the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”

— albert einstein

in taoism, there is a concept called wu wei, often misunderstood as “non-action,” but it is more precisely the practice of non-resistance. aligning oneself with the flow of life rather than forcing it to conform to our desires. it is not about disengagement, but about attunement. like water flowing effortlessly around a stone, or a tree that bends with the wind, wu wei is the wisdom of letting things be as they are. it’s not the absence of action, but the grace of moving with the currents of life instead of against them. the world doesn’t fight against the stone; it moves with it, shaping itself around the inevitable. and in this stillness, we find an extraordinary kind of movement, one that doesn’t require resistance, but allows space for what is to simply be.

within the rock scene from everything everywhere all at once, we witness something akin to wu wei. time and space stop, suspended in the vastness of nothingness. two rocks sit quietly, perched on the edge of an indifferent canyon. no noise, no motion. just a quiet stillness, an eternal pause in the chaos. in that moment, joy, fractured into jobu, has seen too much. she has lived too many versions of herself, too many timelines where everything dissolved into meaninglessness. every choice she made, every version of her, has led to an empty place. her conclusion isn’t dramatic, but profoundly logical: if everything is infinite, then surely nothing is necessary. there is no ultimate meaning in the expanse of infinity.

and yet, evelyn doesn’t fight her daughter’s despair. she doesn’t try to rescue her from the abyss. instead, she becomes still. she lets the void be what it is. she becomes love not as a savior, but as a companion in the absence of answers. she becomes the presence that doesn’t try to fix, but chooses to stay.

like the rocks in their stillness, evelyn doesn’t resist the overwhelming weight of existence. she doesn’t try to push back against the meaningless expanse of the multiverse, but simply shares in it. she meets her daughter’s void not with force, but with the quiet acceptance that love, in its truest form, isn’t a solution. it’s a way of being with what is, without needing it to be different. the love evelyn offers is not a promise to resolve the absurdity of existence but a presence that chooses to remain in it, without the need for answers, without the need for meaning. just like the rocks, she rests in the space between, embracing the void, wu wei in its purest form.

“you do not have to be good. you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

— mary oliver, wild geese 1986

we often misunderstand love when we see it as the thing that brings order to chaos. love doesn’t make sense of the world. it doesn’t restore balance, nor does it prove the universe is kind or that there’s some hidden design behind the noise. if anything, it shows us how irrational we are. how tender. how absurd. it’s what we give, even when nothing asks for it. even when it might not come back to us. love is not a reward, nor is it proof of anything. it is a gesture. and we make it anyway.

biologically, love is shaped by survival. oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin. chemical systems for bonding, for memory, for grief. heartbreak is measurable. longing exists in the limbic system. memories are etched into the circuits of your brain, rehearsed over time. attachment is not some abstract idea, it’s physical. when someone leaves, your cortisol spikes. when they stay, your immune system steadies. love is not separate from nature, it is nature itself.

how beautiful it is that a brain shaped by survival can still choose tenderness. how strange that a species built for replication can still look beyond its own needs, and decide to offer its presence without expectation. even when nothing is certain, even when the future is unclear, we choose to hold space for others, to offer love in its quietest forms.

“there is always something to love, even in a stupid, stupid universe where we have hot dogs for fingers, we get very good with our feet.”

— evelyn wang

we don’t know if the multiverse is real. not yet. it remains a theory, elegant, expansive, unproven. but even without it, the scale of the universe alone is enough to undo us. hundreds of billions of galaxies. trillions of stars. a cosmos expanding faster than light can chase. we are not even a grain of sand in all that space, we are a molecular flicker. a biochemical coincidence suspended in dust and breath.

and yet, here we are.

this body. this timeline. this sentence.

i don’t know what it means.

but i know this is the version where you touched someone’s face and felt your chest ache. where you lost someone and your appetite changed. where a single sentence stayed lodged in your memory for years. where you looked at another person and chose to stay, not because it made sense. not because it was safe. but because it mattered.

and that makes it real.

your heartbeat is not a metaphor, your grief has a half-life. your body, quite literally, remembers. oxytocin strengthens the bond. dopamine builds the longing. cortisol spikes when they leave. when they return, your breath deepens. your immune system stabilises. your nervous system recalibrates around their presence like it’s learning a second language.

meaning is not something you believe in, it’s something you undergo. it lingers in the cadence of your speech. it shapes how you wait for someone to come home. it lives in your cells as residue. we don’t carry meaning like a doctrine. we carry it like scar tissue. like warmth. like echo. it lives in us because we lived through it.

this is how i try to make meaning in an absurd universe. not by pretending it was written for me or by trying to search for some hidden truth. but by inhabiting it. by letting the improbability of being here press into the folds of my body. i don’t know how to comprehend the scale of the unknown. i don’t know how to hold a multiverse in my mind. or how to make peace with the randomness of it all.

but i do know what it feels like to brush fingers in passing and want the moment to stretch. to hear your name in someone’s laugh and want to live inside it. to feel your stomach flip when they look at you like it’s the first time again. to sit in silence with someone and feel the air fill with everything you couldn’t say.

“you tell me the universe is just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. well, i’m glad it’s a speck with you in it.”

— waymond wang

presence is how the ungraspable becomes real. sensation is how the abstract becomes personal.

love isn’t written into the laws of the universe, but the body loves as if it is. it paints it into music, into language, into memory. it holds someone’s hand and calls that enough.

we really are so small. and so, so stupid. we fall apart over things we don’t understand. we grieve before anything is even gone. we forget where we left our keys and spend years remembering a sentence someone said once when they didn’t know we were listening.

we invent meaning like children build forts, out of blankets and conviction. because it’s what we know how to do.

to be here. fully. foolishly. together.