It just is

Undone

Author: Zavair

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I have gotten into this habit of writing a thought down, hoping that I'll expand on it on sunday or wednesday when I am sitting down to write a letter for u. Just a bunch of fragmented thoughts. Sometimes they make it into the letter and sometimes they don't. Anyway, the past few days I've been meaning to articulate what knowing you has come to mean to me. Coincidentally, your "Melody" touches upon it too "I don’t know what this connection is, But it feels different, like a quiet warmth settling in... like a language only our hearts understand." Sighhh lolll Well, besides being a breathtakingly beautiful thought, it also kinda encouraged me to figure out a way to really understand and then perhaps even explain it. So plzzz bear with me as I try to put this connection into words. I might go off on a tangent here loll but I promise, I'll bring it all back :D

PART 1

You know we're so lucky to call ourselves Muslims. I say that for obvious reasons but here, I say it for one peculiar reason. See, one of the gravest misgivings of a rational/analytical mind is to drift away spiritually. What I mean by that is, the greatest intellectuals throughout our history have all been - in one way or another - rather dismissive of their respective religions. So much so, that you'd have noticed most of the "highly educated" people around the world; specially in the west proudly, proclaim themselves as Atheists. The more they try and analyse something... or try and find the answers to the bigger questions in life, the more likely they are, to perhaps start to feel that almost anything can be answered through observation and experimentation etc. And that is precisely why I say that we're so lucky to be born as Muslims. Take for example the collective might of humanity and their brightest minds when trying to answer the BIG questions... from Galileo with his astronomy, and Slipher with his suggestion that galaxies are moving away from us, to Newton and his Laws, to Einstein and his theory of relativity, to Friedman and Lemaitre, and Hubble and Hawking and Weinberg and Edward Witten etc etc all working towards a singular goal of trying to understand how universe functions and identify its properties. There's been hundreds and thousands of corrections and edits and disagreements and consensus within the largest subset of the brightest minds of humanity. They refined and calibrated their workings and calculations over hundreds of years... sometimes calling it the Kaluza-Klein Theory, sometimes the Twister Theory, M Theory or Supergravity and then came the String theory... all instruments of highly detailed, highly sophisticated theories about the inner workings of the universe. And after alllllll this history and effort and times and brilliance, d'you know what vital piece of information they consider as THE magnum opus of all their theories.... their "pièce de résistance" - The be all and end all of all their collective efforts? Consensus reached its peak when they claimed that "Universe is EXPANDING" The big bang occurred and just as any other explosion, picture a cataclysm that erupts outwards and consequently the galaxies formed within are moving farther and farther away from each other over time. Basically, the universe is.... Expanding. Sorta like this... ok maybe not sorta like this... but u get the picture lolll

Soon after… a very common human condition -- i.e hubris or smugness loll or whatever u wanna call it started to cultivate itself. The more any of these big name guys or even the current crop of brightest minds think they are getting closer to the answers to the BIG questions in life, the farther they seem to start drifting away from religion. Because in their minds, they are trying to find the answers to questions that have stumped humanity forever, and they have thus taken this upon themselves to look and question and analyse objectively and rationally. And that in turn takes them away from what they now consider "fanciful". Consider just for a moment, the reams upon reams of papers with complex equations... trying to evaluate even more complex subjects like time and gravity and mass etc and try to imagine how contained within those words, there ought to be hundreds of years worth of knowledge and claims, and adjustments and readjustments. Pin that for context, then tell me if your mind doesn't stagger when you read a verse in Surah Al-Dhariyat that says "We built the heavens with power. And verily, We are EXPANDING IT" -- Mind = blown! Right, I need to bring this into focus before I forget my train of thought lolll.. The reason why I gave u this unnecessarily complicated and rather lengthy crash course in theoretical physics is to help you understand... how I understand when people talk about "The connection"... I hope I haven't lost u yet loll So plz hang on and let me explain.

Its easy to put a thought into a bracket of abstracts. I mean, sure we hear this a lot.... Two people who say that they can somehow feel a connection to each other which they can't quite put into words. It just IS. Its easy to say that there's no point trying to understand it. You just feel it and let it be. It just IS and there's no denying it. Trying to understand it... is akin to understanding why giraffes are giraffing.... or trees are treeing.... or stars are starring loll or... clouds are clouding or rain is raining - you get the point. It just IS. BUT - Isn't that just a cop out though?? And here's another interesting thing... I noticed; When you try and understand it and question it long enough... it suddenly hits you that the reason why people have mutually agreed to call that phenomena "IT JUST IS" is because we realise that even if we could answer it... we still wouldn't know what terms to put that answer in. So you can think of this letter as the terms in which I'm choosing to answer my answer. The answer to.... what exactly is that connection between two people?

PART 2

Us humans... are born with this itch that just can’t help but ponder over the bigger questions about life and world and existentialism etc. Just as we discovered the universe is expanding... there are so many more questions that we wonder about. Things like the unknowns/unseen, the dark matter,, black holes, and countless other inexplicables and how they relate to mankind if indeed they do. Sometimes if we try really hard... we can get some answers. Be it in the form of a particular structure or a pattern or even composition etc. And these can be measured and their behaviour can be predicted too. One such example is also one of the most fascinating things countless biologists, chemists, researchers etc have talked and researched extensively about for decades and decades. Ever since the microscopes were invented and we discovered atoms. And this fascinating thing - this unknown of a yet another BIG question is whats been called the "Missing 0.111%". And it relates to our biology and the minutae of our anatomy if u will. It's called the missing 0.111% because its exactly that... It is the missing or the unknown part of us humans in the most matter-of-fact kind of way. All it is, is the simple breakdown of human composition to its veryyyy last atom. Literally to the last dot of our ATCGs. And that too, without any rounding up, of the figures or taking any scientific liberties. Using simple arithmetic and an undeniable logic of... one + one. A human body's composition - based on our chemistry and years of scientifically accurate research - tells us that humans at its most fundamental composition of atoms are basically made up of two parts/things. It's an oversimplification, mind you... but the point remains.

1st Thing/Part (Major Elements)

1. Oxygen = 65%
2. Carbon = 18%
3. Nitrogen = 3%
4. Calcium = 1.5%
5. Phosphorous = 1%

Adding all of the major elements above gives us: 98.5%.

2nd Thing/Part (Trace Elements)

Trace elements are things like Potassium, Sulphur, Sodium, Chlorine, Magnesium and a few more existing in "trace amounts" all add up to make 1.389% of our composition.

Together, the major elements and the trace elements both give us the total percentage of: 99.889%

Again, every single one of these numbers have been researched the heck out to determine the final number. And even after decades of fine-tuning the calculations and considering all the major & trace elements, as well as the water content, the final tally remains 0.111% shy of the total 100% of human composition. We’ve racked our brains trying to figure out what on earth this missing 0.111% is.. but we just can’t seem to figure it out. This unknown and unseen thing. See, I can call it your soul or the sum of your surroundings or a collection of all your qualities and traits and nature or sensibilities, its the thing that makes us more than our blood and bone... It uses our bodies as vessels. It’s nourished by our good deeds and sincerity. And its this thing that causes you to feel like you've been stirred internally when you hear a touching piece of music or a song or when you meet someone and feel an instant connection that can't be explained. We can feel this …thing when we are alone or when we are with someone who lights up our life. Its that 0.111% of light from unknown, unseen origins that allows me to keep coming back to the cheesy line about "being able to see you in the dark". But wait -- Isn't that just another abstract definition? Yes it is. So how do we quantify it? Right... I think I'm almost there -- or at least I hope I am 😂 ....or this absolute nonsense of ridiculously long letter is just a mad man's ramblings 🫣😂

Let me just for a moment take u back to part 1 of this.... whatever this has been.... The Big Bang and the expansion of universe. Naturally, after their Magnum Opus, the bright ones amongst us put their heads together to try and figure out how life may have emerged in that universe. Slowly but surely, they started to build a timeline... And yet again, countless years and efforts and papers and research helped them reach a consensus for a timeline of how life came to be.... It went something like: After the big bang... some planets, like earth, formed in the habitable zone with liquid water. Then chemical reactions in oceans, lightning, and volcanic activity created amino acids... leading to the formation of simple cells... and finally these simple cells evolved into complex organisms, eventually leading to humans. Super condensing it again but all it means is: The Big Bang → Stars → Elements → Planets → Chemistry → Life → Us. Basically, Life exists because stars created the elements needed to build it. Or in the most simplest of terms possible... you, me, us, them... We are all made of star dust! Dust and Soil and sand and clay. Pin that for context, then tell me if your mind doesn't boggle when you read a verse in Surah Al-Hijr that says "Indeed, We created man from sounding clay, moulded from black mud."

We're lucky to call ourselves Muslims. And I'm grateful that my faith helps guide my science to an undeniable reality. And that reality tells me that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Blink your eyes... and the world you see next didn't even exist when you closed them. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Therefore there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. And so it seems not just the tiny printer printing receipts of your presence, but also us... we are alllll in fact made of memories. Memories of a distant connection that feels like a part of is knowing you from the beginning of everything. Connections are but a faint glow of a distant memory that maybe, just maybe... we are from the same star.