Be here now

In a recent On Being interview with Krista Tippett, physicist Brian Greene described his scientific wonder at the facts of our consciousness, human creativity, and the cosmos. Only at this exact moment in cosmological time, he said, is it possible for particles to arrange themselves in the particular way that gives life to Shakespeare’s King Lear, our conversations with one another, and that report you’re writing this week.

Greene: When you recognize that if you look to the far future, it all goes away, that recognition focuses your attention in a spectacularly powerful way on the here and the now. And by that I don’t mean this very moment, I mean the window in the cosmological unfolding in which it’s possible for stars and planets and living systems and consciousness to exist.

So that window, on human scales, is not tiny. You can do calculations. These were spearheaded by the great physicist Freeman Dyson. But you can do calculations which show that in roughly 10^50 years from now — that’s a long time, right? 10^50 years from now. We’re only now 10^10 years from the Big Bang. But in roughly 10^50 years from now, consciousness will not be possible in our universe. The physical laws almost certainly are such that consciousness itself will be one of the things that by that point will have withered away.

Now, on cosmological scales, that window is still tiny. So in this little, tiny slice of eternity, the universe is able to support life and consciousness. And yes, it then focuses your attention on that window with a degree of energy that I think would be hard to attain without the recognition of it all going away.

This puts things in a different perspective, right? When I consider my business pressures or that wrongheaded thing I said (🤦🏼‍♀️) alongside the entirety of space and time, I have to laugh at the absurdity.

When Tippett asked Greene how this awareness affects his work, he answered in a way that complicates the traditional narrative around impact. The idea of creating something that lasts may be, in the ultra-wide view, less inspiring than we thought. The futility of longevity and the the persistent reality of entropy (disorder, disintegration) shift the lens.

Greene: My dad wanted to write music that would last, and I wanted to come up with ideas of physics that would last. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And that is a powerful motivator. But when you then realize that, well, nothing really lasts — right? It lasts for some period of time in the cosmological timeline, but then it all goes away — it has the impact of taking you to ideas that are incredibly familiar to anybody that meditates or has sessions with mindfulness teachers.

Tippett: Impermanence, ephemera — yeah.

Greene: Yeah, it’s something that the sages and philosophers have been saying forever, which is, what really matters is what’s here and that always looking to the future is somehow missing the point…When you realize that everything dissolves in the sufficiently far future, that immediately has — at least on me, personally — had a profound impact of shifting perspective in a manner that focuses on the things that are here and now, not worrying about what they will be in the there and then.

In this view, the traditional motivator of legacy, or making a “lasting contribution,” can transform into something less calculated. Our work can become less ambitious, but significantly freer and more expressive. It can be joyful and fun, though sometimes frightening in its uncertainty. (Trade offs.)

Brené Brown has called this mode of working “soulcraft.” It has the potential to move us more fully into alignment with the fullest, most expansive sense of reality. Whatever you name it, wherever you source it (universe? god? truth? science?): this is where we relinquish control—and gain transcendence.

Greene: We are these living beings whose bodies are so exquisitely ordered that we can have conscious experience. We can think and feel, and we can look out into the world, and we can figure things out, and we can puzzle about things, and we can have grief and joy and elation and pain. And all of that, collectively, is an enormous feat for a mere collection of particles governed by physical law, which is all that we are. And so to my mind, yes, ultimately it all does fall apart, but look how spectacular it is that we’re here, in this window, at this moment that the universe supports the kinds of structures — stars and planets and, at least on one such planet, living systems such as ourselves who can have these transcendent experiences.

We don’t need to reject society for an ashram, ingest psychedelics, or perfect the meditative act of a single breath to be here now (though please proceed if that’s your jam). We merely have to become a little more aware of our own consciousness, and, with that, our insignificance as tiny specks in the grand order of time and life.

Let that inspire you. Let it free you. Let it focus you—now, here.