I was on 2C-B and lounging about in my brother’s room, staring at a big glowing plastic moon I had bought for him as a joke, when somehow the word and concept of it sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole of cosmic realization. At first the moon (or perhaps my thoughts surrounding the moon) began to rotate like a planetary body, becoming a parent star in a galactic arm, and eventually the central mass of a galaxy itself, ever turning with long tendril arms orbiting around its perimeter.

As the question of it grew, it became the universe itself, on a profoundly metaphysical level, and I came to the realization that every single living organism, both here and elsewhere in the cosmos, are not so much a part or some greater plan or design, but are instead just individual cells and appendages of recently awakened universe. One that has blinked its eyes from a deep sleep and has slowly become self-aware. And just as a child born blind will at some point use their hands and discover they have a body for the first time, we are tiny (but not insignificant) appendages of that universe discovering and exploring itself, trying to make sense or what it even is.

I found immense comfort in the idea that there is no greater meaning to everything than that. We’re just a part of something bigger that is at this very moment trying to make sense of itself, and I don’t need more than that.