— Tales from the Universe
I have a theory that the universe has a sense of humor.
Not a sophisticated sense of humor.
Not the kind that appreciates carefully constructed satire.
I’m talking about the kind of humor that makes you stare at the ceiling and say:
“Really?”
Because sometimes life is just a little too perfectly ridiculous.
You make a careful plan.
Something goes wrong.
The thing that went wrong turns out to be exactly what needed to happen.
You spend three hours looking for something.
It is in your hand.
You spend years trying to understand yourself.
Then one day a six-year-old says something completely obvious and suddenly everything makes sense.
You ask the universe for a sign.
A bird poops on your car.
You ask for a better sign.
It sends another bird.
I don’t think the universe is necessarily trying to communicate with us.
That would be presumptuous.
Maybe it just finds us amusing.
There are billions of us down here, marching around with our little plans and calendars and five-year strategies.
We schedule appointments.
We organize our lives.
We say things like:
“This is exactly how it’s going to go.”
The universe hears this.
And somewhere, I imagine, it smiles.
There is a particular kind of cosmic joke I suspect the universe enjoys.
You spend your entire life trying to become something.
Strong.
Successful.
Important.
Wise.
Impressive.
Then eventually you discover that the people who love you mostly just want you to sit down and eat something.
You spend years worrying about how other people see you.
Then you realize they were mostly worrying about themselves.
You spend an enormous amount of energy trying to control what happens next.
Then life reminds you that you cannot even reliably predict what you will have for lunch.
The universe has a strange way of reducing enormous existential problems to very ordinary ones.
Have you eaten?
Did you sleep?
Where are your keys?
Why is there a sock in the refrigerator?
These are the great philosophical questions.
And perhaps the universe’s favorite joke is that we keep looking for meaning in the enormous things.
The thunderstorm.
The mountain.
The eclipse.
The stars.
The great turning points.
But meaning often sneaks in through the smallest doors.
Someone makes you laugh when you needed it.
Someone remembers your name.
You see sunlight on a kitchen floor.
A dog is extremely happy to see you.
You taste something delicious.
You hear a song you haven’t heard in twenty years.
A stranger holds the door.
Nothing happened.
And somehow everything feels a little better.
Maybe that’s the joke.
We keep expecting the universe to shout.
And it keeps whispering.
We expect a burning bush.
It gives us a warm cup of coffee.
We expect a prophecy.
It gives us a conversation.
We expect a revelation.
It gives us a stupid joke at exactly the right moment.
We expect a map.
It gives us a flashlight.
Then we complain that the flashlight isn’t a map.
The universe probably finds this hilarious.
I also suspect it enjoys irony.
You spend your whole life trying to become independent.
Then you discover that being human means needing other people.
You spend years trying to be taken seriously.
Then the person who loves you most makes you laugh until you can’t breathe.
You try desperately to avoid embarrassment.
And ten years later, the embarrassing thing is one of your favorite stories.
You try to make yourself unforgettable.
Then discover that the most meaningful things you did were things nobody applauded.
You try to leave a legacy.
And someone remembers you because you always made the best pancakes.
The universe doesn’t seem particularly impressed by our definitions of importance.
There are probably rules.
Cosmic rules.
I imagine one of them says:
If a human being becomes completely certain about what happens next, introduce a goose.
Nobody knows why.
It just works.
Another probably says:
If someone desperately needs to learn humility, give them a printer.
And:
If someone says, “What else could possibly go wrong?” something else must immediately go wrong.
These are ancient laws.
Scientists have been trying to formalize them for years.
They are getting nowhere.
Mostly because the universe keeps adding exceptions.
But perhaps there is something more beautiful underneath the joke.
Humor creates distance.
It lets us step outside ourselves for a moment.
You can be terrified of something and still laugh.
You can be grieving and still find something funny.
You can be confused and still enjoy the absurdity.
You can look at the enormous, incomprehensible machinery of existence and say:
“Well, that’s certainly a thing.”
And somehow, you’re still here.
Breathing.
Looking.
Wondering.
Laughing.
That matters.
Maybe the universe doesn’t laugh at us.
Maybe it laughs with us.
Maybe every time we find something funny in the middle of something difficult, we’re participating in something much older than we realize.
The stars burn.
Galaxies collide.
Planets spin.
Life appears.
Creatures become conscious.
And eventually one of those creatures looks at another creature and says:
“Did you seriously just do that?”
And both of them laugh.
Perhaps that’s one of the universe’s favorite sounds.
So I don’t think we should be afraid of absurdity.
I think we should make room for it.
Let the plan fail occasionally.
Laugh when something ridiculous happens.
Enjoy the coincidence.
Notice the beautiful little things.
Let yourself be surprised.
And when life hands you something completely unreasonable, don’t immediately assume you’ve failed.
Sometimes the universe is simply being funny.
Sometimes the wrong turn is the interesting road.
Sometimes the disaster becomes the story you tell for the rest of your life.
Sometimes the thing you were desperately trying to avoid becomes the thing that introduces you to yourself.
And sometimes—
very occasionally—
the universe puts a banana peel directly in the path of your carefully constructed dignity.
There is nothing to do but laugh.
Pick yourself up.
Brush yourself off.
Look around.
And say:
“Okay. I see what we’re doing.”
The universe won’t answer.
It will probably just smile.
And somewhere, very far away, another cosmic clerk will quietly write:
Human noticed the joke.
Proceed.
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