The Sunday Letter #27: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Seventy-five years ago, physicist Fred Hoyle coined the phrase “the Big Bang”—the term that encompasses that massive, universal event that pushed all of existence into being. Hoyle was himself a proponent of the steady state theory, a theory of cosmology which states, essentially, that the amount and rate of matter in the universe always stays the same even as the universe expands—because new matter is created in the universe (through the death of stars and the birth of new ones) at the same rate as matter in the universe is also, eventually, destroyed. The universe expands, but with a fixed average density that does not change over time.
A contrasting theory to the steady state theory, first proposed by a Belgian priest named Georges Lemaître in 1937 and further developed in the 1940s by Hoyle’s contemporary George Gamow, argued that the universe came about as a result of something called the primeval atom. The idea behind the primeval atom was that there was not a fixed average density in the universe—that the galaxies and stars we can see and measure as racing away from us are in fact speeding away and leaving huge gaps of empty space in between the matter that we do recognize and know (or think we know, anyway), because matter is not being created at the same rate as it is also being destroyed.
George Gamow predicted three things as a result of the primeval atom theory—things which couldn’t be measured at the time of the theory’s initial introduction but have, in the intervening decades, been observed in many different ways: 1) the universe would eventually reveal a development of structure, with older galaxies that were less dense and younger galaxies that were more dense (because the life and death cycles of stars would lead to denser galaxies over time—remember, stars living and dying and giving birth to different elements as a result of their varying levels of heat); 2) the existence of a primeval atom would mean that at the initial point of the Big Bang, the Universe would have been so hot that nuclear atoms couldn’t have formed, meaning in turn that a massive wave of background radiation—leftover from that initial point of massive heat—would spread through the Universe as it expanded and cooled; and 3) the extreme heat and successive cooling of the Big Bang would give rise to elements beyond hydrogen, which would have begun to form in those earliest moments of cooling (and which would have been seeded in stars and further refined in those stars over subsequent life cycles over billions of years).
All three of these predictions have been observed in the decades since the Big Bang theory first came into being. But Fred Hoyle spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the theory. His use of the term big bang itself was meant to be ironic, disbelieving—you mean to say that all of this, all of creation, all of these wonderful stars and skies and things we love, all of this comes from one big cosmic explosion? Some hypothetical big bang? Etc.
Now he’s known to many as the “father” of the Big Bang, even though he spent his whole life trying to disprove it.
There’s something in this story that speaks to me beyond the math. Something about the humanness of it all. The gut instinct that tells you otherwise, even in the face of all the (eventual) evidence to the contrary.
Like Einstein and black holes. The way that we hold on. The stories that we tell ourselves in order to keep going.
I’ve spent the last two weeks cleaning my house. It has been wonderful and also exhausting. Wonderful because a good thorough get-rid-of-all-of-those-clothes-you-don’t-wear-anymore spring clean has been long overdue. It was a (very strange, I know) present to myself for finishing my book proposal (YAY!).
Finish that book proposal and then you can clean your house so that you no longer have cleaning as a procrastination excuse, my mind went. I thought I’d get my whole house done from top to bottom in a week. It has taken two. Yesterday I dropped a bag of clothes off at a thrift store and there is one more closet to go through later today and two bathrooms to clean and then I am done.
It’s also been exhausting because as it turns out, cleaning your house from top to bottom—dusting! Getting rid of your clothes! Getting rid of books that you don’t read! Going through your kitchen cupboards!—is more tiring at 41 than it is at 37, which is the last time I did a big Marie Kondo-style purge. (I do clean my house regularly, never fear—but a deep, down-to-the-almost-studs clean has been a while in the coming.)
I also can’t help but think about all of the things that have happened in that intervening five years. So much has changed. Jess died a few short weeks after my last big clean. It’s hard not to look at that now and wonder what other kinds of change and chaos I might be inviting with this new purge. It’s hard to not be superstitious about it, maybe even nervous. Hard to be positive sometimes, to think: I am cleaning out the old so that what is bright and new can come in.
This is a story that I tell myself too, as it turns out.
Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the science and the wonder of everything I’m researching now that I almost forget I am writing about grief, even as I always know I’m writing about grief. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that sometimes the science is so hard for me to take in and understand (my tiny steam engine of a brain!) that I forget the territory I’m actually inhabiting is, in some ways, even harder than physics.
That vast space of unknowing, of not being sure, of holding tightly to the things you’ve lost and never being sure if your heart really is guiding you in the right directiton but plunging in that direction anyway.
Sometimes it feels wonderful. Sometimes (most of the time!) I am convinced of our benevolent universe, eager to throw myself at its intricate mercies and see what comes back to me. And sometimes I retract into that small ball of grief, unsure if the signs that I see are actual signs or if they’re just stories that I’m telling myself in order to get through, to survive. (But even if that were true—stories that we tell ourselves are signs too, things that we use to pull ourselves forward. So in the end, in some unfathomable way, everything will be all right.)
The Artist’s Way is helping with this, tremendously. I did not go on a solo artist date this past week, but I did go to the aquarium in Toronto with some of my favourite people. We took the train into the city and after the aquarium we took a taxi to a restaurant for dinner and I think the train and the taxi were my nieces’ favourite parts of the whole day.
There is always magic to be found anywhere, is what I’m continuing to discover. Even in the midst of what is hard and painful and exhausting and a lot.
When I think about the Big Bang now, I wonder what exactly it was that kept Fred Hoyle doggedly searching for proof of the steady state theory over the course of his life, even as evidence began to mount against it. What made him dig in his heels? What made him so vocally opposed to the idea?
Was it the idea of the apparent randomness of the universe that made him shake his head? A universe that continually expands—with galaxies continually racing away from one another, and no matter being created at an equal pace to keep that fixed average density in place—will eventually, eleven billion years or so down the line, take us to a universe where the only galaxies we’ll be able to see will be those in our local cluster. Everything else will be too far away for us to interact with or perhaps even see.
Was it something else?
Why do we hold on?
Part of the reason all of this has been floating in my head in precisely this way this week is because of this article, which was published earlier this week and went viral on Substack. It’s an article that picks apart astrology and pokes some (very valid) holes in the enterprise. But the tone of the piece as a whole is a bit off-putting—I find it smug, and condescending even as I sometimes find it funny, and disheartening even as I also acknowledge that many of the things pointed out in it are true.
I don’t really believe in astrology, as such. (She doth protest too much! the reader thinks, and with good reason.) I think it’s fun and exciting and I am all for pulling whatever strands of a horoscope or astral chart help one to make sense of the world in one given moment. But is it the whole picture? Hardly.
Astrology, at the end of the day, is a story that we tell ourselves about our universe. It is a story that can help pull us forward and inspire us to achieve if we hold this story in the right way, if we are careful not to cede it too much power.
Astronomy, held aloft by the gilded arms of science, is a story that we tell ourselves in the same way.
Science, in its own way, is also a story. We have convinced ourselves over our staggeringly short time on this planet that it is The Story, the one that will tell us everything we need to know about the world. But we forget that the stories we tell ourselves are never really about the world, as such. We are only ever telling stories about ourselves.
The world? Evolution? Time? How did we get here. How did we come to be.
Outer space? The cosmos? The stars? How does this relate to us. How does this help us find meaning. We are creating ourselves and the world—and the stars—in our own image all the time. Even (maybe especially?) when we look to place ourselves as separate from all of this, to say that we stand apart from these other things, that astrology or religion or mysticism or whatever is gobbledygook and hooey.
We are never one thing or the other—we are everything all at once, all the time.
Last week’s experiment in abundance culminated in a meeting with my accountant to go over my taxes for 2023. Super fun stuff. (It actually is super fun—I like my accountant a lot and we always have a great time catching up.) It was an even happier meeting than usual, as it turns out that I won’t have to pay as much in taxes this year. Which also means that my annual royalty cheque for Disfigured, which is soon to arrive in my bank account, is something that I’ll be able to spend entirely on myself this time around.
This was a very nice, feel-good end to the week. And I suppose you can look at it in one of two ways:
The Normal Universe Way, which says that a surprise money gift at precisely this time is due to nothing more magical than annual royalty statements. You have sowed, Leduc, and so shall ye reap. End of story.
The Benevolent Universe Way, which says that a surprise money gift at precisely this time is because you’ve reached for it in precisely the way that you needed to. You have asked, Leduc, and so shall ye receive. End of story.
Maybe there’s a third way to look at it too. (Spoiler alert: there’s always a third way!)
The Everything-Universe Way, which says, just maybe, that you can ask and reach and sow then look for the fruits of your sowing and your reaching and your asking and see what happens. Maybe you can believe in that benevolent universe and then also acknowledge your own power in helping that benevolence to come about. If I choose to see it as something more than coincidence, then that very act itself imbues my universe with more meaning, which makes me approach my universe in a different way. Which makes me see a benevolent universe in my own life, because I’ve trained myself to see exactly that. It’s the Abundance Buffet, all over again. End of story.
Or maybe it’s just the beginning. Who knows?
It is hard work, this seeking of benevolence. In some ways it feels like the search for order that Fred Hoyle might have been struggling with, all through those decades when he held tight to steady-state theory. I am holding up grief and sadness and worry and anxiety at the same time as I am also trying to plunge ahead with that abundant mindset. I miss Jess. I am grieving other things in my life that I don’t talk about here. Yesterday I went grocery shopping and spent so much money because groceries are all getting so expensive. I worry about what will happen when my grant funding runs out. I worry about what might happen when and if I go back to work later this summer.
I need another year, I’ve been whispering—to nothing, and everything, day in and out. I need at least another year to finish this book, but also I just need to do this. I need to write and think and think and write and stand open in the doors of creative flow because if my life has taught me anything it is that I am very bad at multi-tasking and everything falls apart when I have too many things to focus on.
Why do I hold onto anxiety when benevolence drops right into my lap? Money is freedom, I wrote in one of last week’s TAW money exercises. Money does not solve every problem, but it certainly makes tackling them all a smidge easier. I will practice abundance. I will practice abundance. I will practice abundance. And then right on cue, a little bit of breathing-room-in-the-form-of-money arrived on Friday.
And still I think: luck, coincidence, no big deal. The Universe might be looking out for you but it also might be random, Leduc. Hold on to that worry. Where are you if you have nothing to gnaw on? Dig your goddamn heels in.
Why. Is. It. So. Hard. To. Let. Go?
All of which is to say, I suppose, that I understand Fred Hoyle on a level that surprises me.
I will never understand him on the level of math. But on that refusal-to-let-go level? All over it. I have this down pat.
We are never one thing or the other, though, are we. We are skeptics and believers all at the same time. We hold grief in one hand and joy in the other.
Sometimes grief and joy are intermingled, held in the same palm. This is what we get from life. This is what we have to make of it. My story for this week was one of abundance and worry and gifts and magic and anxiety and joy and sorrow and a million other things.
This coming week, it will be a whole other configuration of things. Sorrows and worries and joys and gifts.
And the stories we all tell ourselves, as we hold our lights aloft and make our way along the path.
Currently Reading: The Wild Edge of Sorrow, by Francis Weller.
Currently Watching: The Signal
Currently Eating: This Stewed Lentils with Marinated Feta recipe from Dishing Out Health.
Currently Substacking: Between a Rock and a Card Place, Caroline Cala Donofrio’s wonderful Substack community that also features a Sunday Letter!