Yesterday was the day I finally became free from the castigating experience that were my first semester exams. I walked out of the classroom an hour and ten minutes early, with a new freedom, and the immense desire to go to a bookstore to smell the intoxicating smell of the books.
So I did, and as I was browsing through the bookshelves, I came across the book ‘Turtles All The Way Down’ by John Green.
Another John Green book. Oh no. Stop yourself before it’s too late.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t. I bought it, and got left with only a hundred bucks in my wallet. There goes my saved money. Damn you, John Green. He always does this to me. I can resist myself from buying a nice Harry Potter book, but John Green’s book? No way. The full John Green experience can be achieved only via a physical copy of the book, where you can occasionally take small whiffs of the pages. That is my kind of narcotic.
However, after reading that book, that four hundred bucks spent on it felt worth it, because it has permanently changed my personality. My definition. My outlook on things. And you can’t put a price on that.
Turtles All The Way Down is a book about Aza Holmes, a 16 year old girl who is suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Over the course of the book, Aza is struggling against her own thoughts, her own body, her entire existence. She wants to battle the germs that are apparently trying to take over everything that is her’s.
Hear this out: 50% of our body is made up of germs. That means half of us is not even us. The food we eat, it is not eaten by us, but rather consumed by something else.
Nothing is ours. Not even ourselves, our bodies. Are we not real? Do we even have souls left in there? Our soul, the one pure thing that is not yet been marked as a breeding ground by microbes?
For us, these questions are rare, and pop up in our mind once in a while, or almost never. But for Aza Holmes? This is what she thinks everyday. Every night, when she struggles for sleep. When she is having food. When she is painfully removing her band aid and applying sanitizer to her wound.
John Green said in his book that as you learn science, you don’t really get answers. You just get better questions.
Can the same be applied to these thoughts? Or even more interestingly, to this universe?
What do we know about this universe, really? Are we just organisms living on a giant blob of molten lava, which is a part of an infinitesimally larger universe?
I say yes.
Let’s study about the microorganisms. They are small. So small, that they cannot be even seen by the naked eye. Just nano meters long. What do they know about themselves? Are they aware they are inside a human body? Are the aware they are living inside another living thing? No.
Now compare this to our universe.
To a star millions of light years away, we are invisible. But if someone were to put a telescope, they could see us. So what does that make us in front of them? Microorganisms. So small, cannot be even seen by a naked eye.
What if we are the microorganisms and living inside something big? What if we are the microbes and the universe is the human body?
Are we a part of something?
The organisms don’t know where they are. They live their average lifespan of 12 minutes and die, without knowing about even the tiniest reason why they existed in the very first place.
Are we also the microorganisms, who live their average lifespan of 70 years, and die without knowing where we are too?
Science hasn’t been around to the point to tell us the truth. The truth of our existence. Of our role.
Microorganisms helped the human body as they fed on food and died. We are feeding on food and dying. Are we contributing to something? What is there above, above the millions of clusters of galaxies, supernovas, and black holes?
Like John Green said, as you learn science, you don’t really get answers. You just get better questions.
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