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A Stoic Meditation on Awe: Seeing the Invisible · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a hard time getting to this meditation?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was it difficult to arrive?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: As you might know, the entity that is listening now, the entity we call you, consists of trillions of atoms that are so very precisely arranged that they will never exist in this formation again.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: All of the tiny particles that are in Silent Symphony right now are responsible for every heartbeat, every breath, every reaction you have ever made and will ever make.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's particularly odd is that even though you are a very complex and very alive person, if we were to pick you apart atom by atom, we would not find anything that is indeed alive.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We would find the same atoms that might exist in a rock or a cloud or the sun, but arranged differently.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is also easy to take for granted that there is anything at all.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: The universe itself hasn't always existed.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was a time, if we want to call it that, where there were no flowers or people or animals or sky, there was no universe whatsoever.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that you made it here today is indeed very impressive, not to mention, of course, how you've lived this long.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of the billions of species that have existed on Earth, 99.99% have become extinct, gone, never to return.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: While the atoms in your system are very good at keeping you alive, the atoms in the world around you can cause major threat to that goal.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, we also have to thank every one of our ancestors, who include monkeys, fish, and even single-cell organisms, for reproducing at precisely the right moment in precisely the right way to allow us to exist.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if over the last 3.8 billion years any of our ancestors did anything differently, we would not be here, listening to this.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you are a betting person, but if you were to go back to the dawn of the universe, you would be beyond foolish to bet on your own existence.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The likelihood of you being alive is equivalent to two million people all getting together with a trillion-sided die, throwing the die up in the air and everyone getting the exact same number on the first throw.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you look outside, it's almost impossible to contemplate that the cities and buildings and cars and coffee cups were once made of stars.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stars that became unstable, then exploded to become gas clouds, eventually becoming solar systems.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the creation of the universe, according to science, is even stranger still.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that exists in the entire universe was once compacted into a space so small it had no dimensions.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is known as the singularity.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to imagine what a singularity would look like because it doesn't exist inside of a universe like ours.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: In many ways, it is a no thing.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: The question I have for you is, how is this landing?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much awe and delight do you experience contemplating these facts?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: How you answer might depend heavily on your age.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Your typical two-year-old will find true delight in walking through a puddle or seeing how magnets repel each other or the way a balloon seems to float.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: As this two-year-old gets older, the price of ore becomes more expensive.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: As a 22-year-old, you would need a significantly rarer and novel event to trigger the same amount of delight.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: That 22-year-old may even be proud of their lack of ore, telling people they have grown up when simple things no longer delight them.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: From a stoic perspective, losing your sense of delight, which is a wonderful aspect of being alive, isn't something to brag about.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just in the same way we would be concerned if we lost our sense of smell or taste.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: We should also be concerned if we can no longer feel awe.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And more importantly, if this is the case, we should take the steps required to rekindle it.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can practice regaining the sense of awe we once had by trying to make the invisible visible again, by trying to see the magic of reality.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Become a master at seeing the invisible.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave you with a quote from Marcus Aurelius.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.