Fact Check Me: We Were Born From Chaos
Why Would Life Be Any Different?
People love to say depression is living in the past
and anxiety is living in the future.
Cute little sayings.
Clean. Digestible.
The kind of thing people put on posters because it sounds wise.
But if that’s true,
then what is living in the present?
Everyone says the answer is peace.
Mindfulness. Presence. Enlightenment.
But I’m not so sure.
Because the more I think about it,
the more “living in the moment” sounds like just learning to accept things exactly as they are.
And if accepting everything—good and bad alike—without resistance is wisdom…
how is that not just apathy with better marketing?
Every guru says the same thing:
Accept what comes.
Let go.
Be present.
Release attachment.
But if I stop fighting pain,
stop wishing things were different,
stop resisting what hurts—
am I enlightened?
Or have I simply learned how to go numb politely?
Maybe the present is not peace.
Maybe the present is burden.
The past gives us regret.
The future gives us fear.
And the present gives us what simply is.
The scars.
The pain.
The consequences.
The things you wake up carrying whether you want to or not.
And here’s where I start to wonder if maybe all of this is bigger than us.
We are told we are made of stardust.
That every atom in our bodies was forged in dying stars.
That the matter making up our bones, blood, and brains
is the same matter that makes up planets, moons, and galaxies.
So if that’s true—
if we are made from the universe itself—
then our thoughts and emotions must belong to it too.
Because what is emotion, really?
Electrical impulses.
Chemical reactions.
Matter in motion.
How could feeling be separate from the physical world
if feeling itself is produced by physical matter?
How could emotion be anything other
than the universe expressing itself through us?
And if the universe exists in constant tension—
gravity pulling inward,
matter exploding outward,
stars collapsing,
worlds spinning,
everything dragged and stretched by opposing force—
why would we be any different?
Why do we assume creatures born from chaos
should somehow feel peace all the time?
Maybe the conflict inside us
is just a smaller reflection of the conflict that built everything.
Maybe regret, fear, and burden
are not flaws in the design.
Maybe they are proof
that we are part of it.
Because to feel the past pulling behind you,
the future pulling ahead of you,
and the weight of the present pressing down all at once—
is to feel time in its entirety.
Past.
Present.
Future.
All pulling at once
like gravity from every direction.
I have anxiety about the future.
Whether I’ll pay my bills.
Whether I’ll get sick again.
Whether the cancer comes back.
Whether I’ll ever do enough. Be enough.
I carry regret for the past—
choices made, mistakes lived, roads taken and not taken.
And in the present?
I live with what illness left behind.
The scars.
The limitations.
The permanent reminders.
I missed my son’s first year of high school because I was in a coma.
Literally. Not figuratively.
And what am I supposed to do with that?
Cry forever?
Rage at the sky?
Pretend grief somehow changes reality?
No.
I carry it.
Not because I don’t care.
Not because I’m apathetic.
But because reality does not care how I feel about it.
So maybe being present is not peace.
Maybe being present is simply accepting
that some pain cannot be fixed—
only carried.
And maybe feeling regret, fear, and burden all at once
isn’t madness.
Maybe it isn’t imbalance.
Maybe it is simply what happens
when a conscious piece of the universe
becomes aware enough
to feel time pulling from every direction at once.
Maybe that’s not broken.
Maybe that’s just being human.