The Paradox of My Existence

There is a paradox constantly happening inside my mind which really bothers me.

On one hand, I think that nothing I do really matters. There are times when I think about the vast scale of the universe and the fact that we’re just a speck on a speck of a rock floating into the infinite universe and that in however many billions of years, the sun will swallow the earth and that will be it. The end.

And there are times where I feel like everything I do really matters. To think about how crazy it is to influence everyone’s life around me no matter how small it is just with my existence and the curiosity about how this great story called life going to plays out. And the fact that every actions literally has infinite consequences and what we do in life echoes in eternity.

So, a question pop inside my head.

“Which one of these way of thinking should I stand with?”

If all that confuses you, think about it this way.

There are 2 fundamental pillars of modern physics. The Einstein’s theory of relativity theory and the quantum theories. Both are arguably the most successful theories humanity ever found, but the problem is that they’re contradictive to one another.

In the theory of relativity, you’ll be told that the universe is deterministic, but in the quantum theories you’ll learn that in the most fundamental level of the universe is probabilistic, madness right?

Apparently the answer to this paradox are “both and neither”. Embrace the paradox.

Both are just theories, stories, or a principles that have different applications. Even with the contradictive nature of it. Stories and theories are just tools we use to navigate in life and to try to understand the world, and I am not beholden to just one. It might feels like insanity or hypocrisy, but it is what it is. A complex map to guide our journey in life.

Both theories works really well for areas they described, both “seemingly” contain an element of truth. Is “seemingly” the closest we get to an objective truth? Yeah, apparently there is a nobel prize for anyone who can answer the objective truth of the universe and it haven’t been claimed yet.

Ideally, one day we’ll get a single unified theory, a simple “theory of everyting”.

Then I realized that the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know anything, and that scares me. But lately I understand that it actually is the grand adventure. To act without perfect information. Since science is about using the best theories we have at hand so far, that is until you found a better one.

The truth can only be found with going out and explore, experiments with different tools, theories and explanations. Eventually smashing them together and see if it works out or not, maybe one day we’ll have our own theories.

And for the time being, all we can do is to venture to the great unknown and complete this great story called life.