Whose Idea Was This, Anyway?

Yesterday I opened up the question, What if the creator of the universe was just another artist who made something amazing and released it into the world (which is kinda meta since the it in question is, in fact, the world)? I intentionally (it’s not lazy if it’s intentional!!!) left the question open to allow anyone who comes across it to ponder it fairly unencumbered by too many clumsy suggestions of mine.

Throughout the day yesterday, in my dreams overnight, and into the fresh dark abyss of this morning, I tried to think of some clumsy suggestions for ways this could have transpired, just to sort of sketch out a few pictures on blank canvases of thought. Here’s what I’ve come up with as starting points (to say I’ve come up with these is presumptuous af, I know; I’m sure anyone could whip up links to more sophisticated, better thought-out, probably ancient versions of the metaphysical narratives I’m claiming to have concocted . . . authorship of these ideas isn’t the point here, it’s really the experience of thinking through it that counts):

1. Life, a force, an unbridled chaos exists across, outside, and through infinite universes . . . the infiniverse, if you will. Leave life out long enough, and entire worlds will grow like mold, and out of those worlds will grow elements, and out of those elements will grow organic life, and out of that organic life will grow sentient life, and out of that sentient life will grow people who will give each other venereal diseases, and then those people will circle back to mold to make penicillin, cue The Lion King soundtrack. It’s the cirrrrrrrcle of liiiiiife. I know I got silly at the end there, but this is an idea the gist of which I’m sure a lot of people take seriously. It might feel impersonal, but the need for a personal explanation for our origin story might just be a product of humanity, and that’s okay.

2. Somebody, a being, created all this. Again, not my original idea, it’s just a way to think about it. I’ still about 15 years in on deconstructing the extrapolations of this idea out of my psyche, so I’m not going to explain it a whole lot further. But there are a lot of doodles to blot onto this canvas: the Supergod, the chaotic God, the benevolent dictator God, the incompetent God, the not-really-a-god-just-a-different-kind-of-being Creator. You could go on and on with possible character sketches for the creator of the universe.

3. We’re just a rudimentary stroke of the pen or line of code in a much more complex physical, technological, spiritual world (take your pick). In this sketch, we’re the sketch. We’re characters in a dream some other being is going to wake up and annoy their friends trying to retell. We’re nonplayable characters in a video game. We’re extras in a cosmic film. We’re the existential equivalent of dung beetles in a world of higher beings. Zoom out far enough, and our galaxies are bacteria or imperceptible static on some alien kid’s iPad.

4. Everything we see as living, everything we see as lifeless, everything that fills the space between what our eyes are able to see has a spirit and exists beyond the realm in which our brain is able to access and comprehend. There is so much more than we realize.

5. There really is a lot of nothingness. What you see is what there is. Zoom in, really, really, really far in, and you’ll find the subatomic particles scientists have found. Maybe a few others that are even smaller, but they’re essentially barren deserts of boring detail. Zoom out, and the universe (the only one there is) looks swirly and sparkly and colorful and captivating like an ocean of astral enormity. But it’s just incomprehensible art. There’s no meaning to it. There’s no one behind it. It happened. It exists. There is life scattered through it, but those individual specks of life begin and end and never return. From this distance, the notion of good and evil is laughable. It’s a silly little human concept. Before we arrived, and after we’re gone, any thought of good and evil will vanish.

Well. That certainly was a trip for me, I don’t know how you’re doing.

One thought keeps nagging me throughout this exercise, and it’s rooted in the discussion of creativity. Artists often say their inspiration doesn’t seem to originate with them. Their, dare I say our, ideas come to them (us). I didn’t think that story into existence, I opened my mind to it and saw it there. That song, that melody . . . I quieted my soul, and I heard it. Now, other writers, musicians, and creators of all stripes will call that nonsense, and that’s okay. But if you’ve ever written anything and not known how the ideas appeared, or if you’ve ever created any kind of art and then returned to it wondering how you did it . . . like, I can’t believe I made that. I barely remember making it, and I don’t remember plotting out a design for it. It feels like someone else’s creation . . . well, you’re not alone. I’ve definitely felt that way. I hope I’ll feel that way again. But the prevalence of this feeling is as widespread as art itself. It may be as far-reaching as creation itself.

I didn’t type out number 6 in my list of creator character sketches, but if I did, I’d write that we’re one. We are the creative work and the creator. We are life. We are love. We are God. We are the dust out psychotic creative self churns up in the chaos.

I don’t know. And I don’t know that it matters. Yes, we all have some yearning to know where we came from. The Bible itself tells the stories of how desperate we humans are to have gods to worship and to cure the feeling of being alone and vulnerable in this scary world.

But I don’t know the origin of the melodies I whistle (Okay, lately, it’s been “A Whole New World,” from Aladdin, but I don’t know where Alan Menken got the idea). I don’t expect to know who or what created the world in which I whistle, and I don’t expect them to be able to explain it any better than I can explain what I create.

We have now. I hear now slipping by me with every sweeping click of the second hand. We have each other. We have the power to create. Whoever made this world, we are the ones who can make our place in it truly beautiful.

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