Let Yourself Be Embraced

I’ve been thinking about the great migration, Noon and night they leave the flock, And I imagine their destination Meadow grass, jagged rock

In May of last year Paul Simon released Seven Psalms, a 33 minute and 2 second long completely acoustic song. Song — Not album.

It is not a Tweet or a Tik Tok — It does not fight tooth and nail for your attention. It assumes it already has it.

Music streaming is a blessing and a curse. We’ve been given complete control over what we hear. The second we don’t like a song we can pick a new one by moving our thumb. There is no switching cost. We are in a state of constantly and actively optimizing our own dopamine.

Amazed at our ability to steer, we refuse to relinquish the drivers seat. Surely there is no-one we trust more than ourselves with the wheel?

The Lord is my engineer The Lord is the earth I ride on The Lord is the face in the atmosphere The path I slip and I slide on

Traveling by Airplane and Train has always produced a certain tranquility for me.

I am moving forward towards my goal, progressing on my journey. And yet I am doing no work. I have complete trust that I am going where I need to go.

The pilot never asked for my trust; My ticket is proof that I’m willing to give it.

I’m not checking my mirrors, looking out for gas stations, and adjusting my hands. There is nothing I can do to aid the odyssey; nothing I can do to better utilize my time. I have no recourse but to sit and enjoy the privilege of existence.

Much like a pilot or conductor, Paul Simon similarly assumes your trust. He’s allowing you to stop optimizing your own dopamine and instead simply live with your existence undisturbed.

So what in the world are we whispering for? Everyone’s naked, there’s nothing to hide Gonna carry my grievances down to the shore Wash them away in the tumbling tide

What happens when a human being lives in a constant state of decision-making?

Our goal is in front of us and we have been given the tools to pursue it. We abuse every heuristic at our disposal. We become tribal and risk averse. Seek short term gains.

There is no time to evaluate our priors; There is work to be done.

Relinquishing the steering wheel can bring a clarity of mind that is not otherwise possible.

When we forfeit the ability to take seemingly-practical steps towards our goal, we can breach into the world of the seemingly-unpractical.

We stop seeking the local optimum and start to ponder the global optimum.

Much like soldiers, when we spend our entire lives in the fog of war we do not know what to do when its gone. We forget how to live without optimizing.

We forget how to embrace the comfort of our own existence.

The Covid virus is the Lord, The Lord is the ocean rising, The Lord is a terrible swift sword, A simple truth, surviving

The Biblical Book of Job simultaneously belittles your grief and brings you peace.

The book begins immediately with the pious Job losing his family, fortune, and health to chance. For 30 chapters Job struggles against his fate; Attempting to find a way to uphold his faith in the face of loss.

When God finally decides to speak, it is not with an answer. It is with a question.

For three chapters of dense poetry God expounds on the complexity and magnitude of the world.

The world we live in is nothing but fate. Who are we to fight against the tides we find ourselves in?

We sprint on a treadmill of optimization for a chance at gaining some advantage. How minisicule is this advantage in the face of Leviathans and Behemoths?

We are a smudge on a pale blue dot sitting in a vast universe:

Carl Sagan writes:

Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

After the first decade of our lives we forget that our decisions are rounding errors. In our earliest years we did not fight against the wave of time that towered over us. Instead we let ourselves be embraced.

The truth is that we never ceased to be voyagers on this universal journey. We were simply so occupied with fighting for an inch of leg room that we forgot to look out the window.

Simon concludes:

Life is a meteor Let your eyes roam Heaven is beautiful It’s almost like home Children! get ready It’s time to come home