Brains!

I stayed behind in biology today. The lab smelled like Thai food, having burned peanuts all morning for energy measurements. Either way one of the students stayed back too, he’s older must be late twenties, said he was a cosmology major or something along those lines. He’s typical Humboldt-scruffy, wearing old jeans, a sherpa-wannabe-hat, a pair of leather hiking boots, and fleece sweater. His eyes, which I had never cared to notice till today, are green. Either way he’s the kind of guy you would expect to see somewhere with a huge pack on his back squinting at the sun. He and my lab instructor were talking about cell function and process and he sort of sat back in his chair and he chuckled.
“I grew up this atheist kid, took AP biology in high school, knew the reason for this thing and that thing and believed and still do that evolution is what shaped all of life and created these thousands of different processes. But as I grow older and go more places see more things of such immense complexity it’s hard to believe that there isn’t something behind all of it besides just evolution. It’s so hard to fathom and take in all this stuff and not question. It’s insane to wonder how if you did one thing different in a tiny process how the earth and universe could be totally different. One mistake and change can make your vision, ya know? It’s so unbelievable sometimes.”
I wonder if the longer you live the wiser you become you begin to have more faith or more spirituality. I believe I have started that. I don’t believe in god or in anything of the sort but one begins to see everything differently the more you know. How everything is completely intertwined. How you cant really regret the past because if it didn’t happen there would be no life now for better or for worse. Everything and everyone is so directly but seemingly distant that its all like one thing. Like a tree or something so many parts so big and sturdy and delicate at the same time.