How to build a universe
Starting is a superpower.
I can’t believe I’ve become this person.1
The type of person who actually tries out new foods. The person who spontaneously gets a nose ring after wanting one for most of her (young) adult life. The person who compresses 29 years of existence into 3 suitcases and moves across continents to start over.
How do we build a universe?
Change is Scary
In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his foundational work— Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
Inside it, he chronicled what we’ve come to know as Newton’s First Law of Motion:
“Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.”
As 1 of perhaps the 4 people (teacher inclusive) in secondary school who actually liked Psychics, coming across the term “psychological inertia” years later was fascinating to me.
To find that similar to an object at rest, it takes an external force (either equal or greater) to get us to act beyond our comfort zone.
But then I’ve been thinking, what if our main concern isn’t the comfort we leave? What if it’s rather the discomfort that we’re instead getting into?
There’s a tension that happens when we hold two or more conflicting beliefs. These conflicting beliefs could be as basic as “I want to wake up before dawn” versus “I want to sleep past midnight.”
This situation creates a background mental tug-of-war but news flash? The brain is too busy keeping us alive to play cognitive inter-house sports.
Proposed by Festinger, this experience is termed ‘cognitive dissonance’2. In simple A-B-C terms:
A - We commit to information.
B - We’re presented with new and contrary information.
C - Chaos (a.k.a. internal conflict, a.k.a discomfort) ensues.
Naturally, we wish to reduce this discomfort.
And so we do this either by changing those beliefs alongside their subsequent actions or by downplaying the new information in an attempt to rationalize our already existing beliefs.
However, there’s the third option, which is understandably more appealing but no less harmful: simply ignoring. Inertia.
This isn’t the only reason we’re averse to change: another theory is the sunk cost fallacy, which explains why we continue a shitty job for decades or stay in dead-end relationships. I explained it better in this post.
But that’s not all.
There’s also the ‘status quo bias.’ Shouldn’t we just stick to what we know? I’m sorry, but the status quo is a very valid reference point.
But is this a cop-out to avoid decisions in the first place? To be an object in a rest state?
Because even though this bias might be great for picking out what’s for dinner, it’s not so fantastic when it comes to bigger life decisions — even if that decision ends up being ‘status quo’. At least you decided.
What I’m noticing is regardless of theories, there’s a common thread: uncertainty.
More dire in pre-historic times when this must have been more apparent, uncertainty can literally mean death. It was (and probably still is) important to be sure of exactly what happens next.
Therein lies the kicker:
Life is inherently uncertain.
How to Build a Universe
In the beginning, there was nothing.
And then, all at once, it seemed, there was everything.
How do we build a new life, a universe?
For me, it started with a friendly smile at the security guard at my local library’s entrance, a coffee chat with a friend met via social media, long walks around my new neighbourhood, a light-hearted exchange with the barista who drew a makeshift foamy heart on my cup of coffee3, swinging in the opposite direction with a 12-year-old girl I came across in the park.
It turns out that with building anything (a newsletter or a life), you start with what’s right in front of you.
How do we build a universe?
By resisting our resistance to change.
The person who also abandons her work? Long time, no see, I know, I know. For a while, I contemplated how to resume these posts. I worried if I still had anything to say but much more, if you’d still care. I was also worried if I’d be able to keep up a weekly cadence, so I’ll start with every 2 weeks for now. Thank you for being here 🤍
Johnny Jermias, Cognitive dissonance and resistance to change: the influence of commitment confirmation and feedback on judgment usefulness of accounting systems, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol 26, Issue 2, 2001.
I have sorely missed this writing...no less so this writer.
My resentment for transitions beggars belief, and one is staring me squarely in the face right now (I have managed to kick the can down the road a little bit, even though that singular act is costing me more money than I am comfortable parting with). I guess the older we get, the more painstaking we become just so that we do not topple the life we have managed to put together. The repercussions of mistakes, I have realized, are proportional to one's age. If it weren't for the expectations people have of me (and I of myself), I'd indulge that craving to be heedless.
Mehn...reading this launched my mind a cesspool of chaos. Like someone finally gets it. Tried quitting my job in January, then I got promoted with perks. Decided again to quit in September, got promoted again, with more perks. Everyday I wake up feeling like an imposter. I keep thinking to myself, wetin I really dey do?
Sunk cost fallacy, Psychological inertia, cognitive dissonance, all three are probably valid assessments of my own internal conflict.
Deciding to build a new universe when the old is thriving and functional is wayyy harder than I ever imagined it would be.
Newton could have been fairer to Inertia.