I can remember seeing a puzzle on the first day of Grammar class. On the whiteboard I saw the phrase “that that is is that that is not is not is not that it it is”. The challenge was to put in all the proper capitalizations and punctuations without adding words to reveal a grammatically correct phrase. The solution was “That, that is, is. That, that is not, is not. Is not that it? It is.” I was floored. I wanted so badly for that quote to have meaning, for it to be profound. But, to no avail, I only could make it out to be a benign challenge made out by what I’d guess to be one bored English teacher.

I’m always searching for the meaning of it all, and maybe you are too. For me, it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to just “go with it”. How anyone feels comfortable is lost on me. How can you feel great knowing it can all end at any time? Every exam I’ve ever studied for, every lesson I’ve ever learned, every taste or smell or sound I’ve ever experienced, stripped away from me without rhyme or reason. We can die right now! All that you were, all that you are, all that you could’ve been is capable of flicking off like a flashlight never to return. How can you be watching Jeopardy right now?!? How can you not feel so small?

I sometimes feel small. Feeling small makes me feel like I don’t have control. Like I’m the subject of something else’s design or intent, to be manipulated as the great winds or waves wish. Want to know some of the things that can make me feel small? It’s not women in high heels. It’s knowing that if you broke up all of measurable time into a calendar year, with the Big Bang on January 1st. A month would represent a more than a billion years, and the time that man existed would only be of the last seconds of the last minute of December 31st. It’s knowing that there are 7.5 billion people on Earth now, and that number doesn’t even scratch the surface of big. A billion has 9 zeroes, and that number is mind blowing to us. What about how many atoms in the universe? That has around 80 zeroes. It’s impossible for you brain to even picture how big of a number 80 zeroes is. I grapple with it every day. I grapple with an even bigger number than atoms in the universe - Shannon’s number. The approximate number of legal (not logical) moves that can be made in a game of chess. That number, has 120 zeroes. When I see those zeroes, it’s hard not to feel like one myself.

I see myself as small and insignificant at times, because I separate myself. I differentiate. I think "I'm just one person of billions, on just one planet of just one solar system in one of the gigantic amount of galaxies".

And that can make you think of the situation as pointless. When I think I’m only a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter, where the universe is a full yard stick, what choice do I have but to conclude that I hold little value.

But that's neglecting the real logic of it all. Sure, it makes communicating way easier to separate ourselves from the trees, the animals, the mountains, or the stars, but we aren't. You and I are all connected. You're as much of the universe as a rock, a planet, a whale, or a bacteria. It's one system. You're also not simply the product of that system, you're the activating reagents. You're the chemical reactions combining to change this universe. There's isn't a big or small, there just is an "is", and you're the "is". You can't get bigger or more important than you are, because you are all that there can be, has been, or will ever be.