1. Improbability
2. Hilarity
Have you ever had a moment in your life that felt like a type of interweaving improbable awe? That coincidental perfect timing when a friend from your past calls you at the exact moment you happened to randomly think of them?
It's difficult to put these esoteric almost absurd experiences into words, as they can sometimes seem beyond us...
It's likely that if you are a human being (as apposed to a robot), you may experience (but are not limited to):
moments in your life that feel like cinematic story telling, laced with improbability, oddity, and wonder
a realization that life can sometimes feel like a sketch comedy of perfect rhythmic timing and hilarity
Hilarity and improbability come in light and dark shades.
Bismuth – #83 on the Periodic Table of Elements
The lines can get blurry between seemingly polar emotional states.
Crying can be easily nudged into laughter. Excitement can feel like nervousness, and moments of sadness can be converted into art.
Of course humans have a great spectrum of emotional depth, however the pendulum can be guided in our favour with intent, and a willingness to include the ingredient enthusiasm in life's equation.
The etymology of the word enthusiasm comes from the Greek enthous, which literally translates to being “in divine flow,” or possessed by God.
Have you ever experienced that universally-annoying circumstance of your printer breaking down that one time you really needed it, (10 minutes before the meeting you needed that piece of paper for)?
Some may call this coincidence, synchronicity, karma or chance. It doesn't matter what we "call" these moments of mysterious timing, but our willingness to submit to the abstract absurdity of our lives measures the magnitude of the value we can extract from them.
Just because something is coincidental, doesn't mean it's any less magical. We just need to define what "magic" means to us.
Our brains contain a bundle of neurons/neural network pathways called The Reticular Activating System. This part of our brain acts as a gatekeeper for filtering information that enters our conscious minds.
Ever felt hungry for Chinese food and then all of the sudden you start seeing Chinese food restaurants pop up? Or maybe you decided you want to pursue a specific academic path, and then you sequentially notice handfuls of schools in that field (that you had never noticed before), suddenly emerge in your city.
This is the RAS filtering information that is applicable to your conscious mind. Wow, what a useful brain function!
It seems to make sense that our conscious minds are able to filter information that supports and aligns with our goals and desires; however there are some moments that seem so divinely aligned, that if your life was a cinematic/drama/comedy sketch, you couldn't even write this stuff!
I like to refer to this phenomenon as "the cosmic wink."
#nofilter
When we take the time to fully appreciate the hilarity of these improbable moments in our lives, we set up the neurology structures of our brains and our RAS to become a receptor for more synchronistic awareness.
The hilarity of the Universe works in mysterious ways; when we are willing to laugh at the jokes (even the unfunny ones, like our printers breaking down) we are able to learn lessons, and extract more meaning and juiciness from life.
When applying and discovering hints of hilarity and improbability, the stresses of life start to diminish as we begin to unlock the abstract nature of our entire world.
We are living on a suspended tiny blue dot in the sky after all – the very make up of our Earth was built on the ingredient of improbability, complete with the perfectly improbable tilted axis of planet Earth, making all life possible.
Even our being conceived into this world is a symbol of our unique rarity. According to this Harvard article, women make over 100,000 eggs over their lifetime. Our dad's have 1 trillion sperm during the years that our moms could get pregnant.
The odds of you, that one egg, meeting that 1 sperm are 1 in 400 quadrillion!
Applying these ingredients to my life has been a total game changer with encouraging "maintenance of the mind"; transforming mundane to miraculous.
Ironically, "sweating the small stuff" can be damaging for us all. Some artists may choose to never release their work into the world, because of perfectionist tendencies – this can be crippling. Some of us may not appreciate some of the items in our homes because of slight imperfections, slants or scratches. "That desk that is so perfect except for that one knot."
It is unfortunate that this perfectionist mindset can even carry over into the way we view our bodies and our self image.
Does this sound familiar to anyone: "I like my body except for..."
The story and structure of our cellular make up is miraculous. We are living miracles – let's start acting like it!
The asymmetrical improbable nature of the Universe is always present and the scientific elements of our Universe are all contained within us. This is a celebration!
You aren't just one drop in the ocean, you are the whole ocean contained in that one drop. – Rumi
Whenever moments of stress and anxiety start to creep into my life. I like to look at things from a macro perspective. Looking at how many years dinosaurs have been ruling the Earth, compared to the tiny sliver that humans have made in the Dinosaur Timeline, gives me great perspective of the hilarious scale of our significant cosmic insignificance.
