A Spirituality of Random Excitations

There’s a spiritual belief I encountered once, that sees life as fluctuations over the surface of nature — like how all matter is mere excitations of the Higgs field, and like the waves that rippled across the koi pond outside the wake of my aunt and my grandfather.

At the flick of a koi’s tale a new wave forms. It cuts proud and defiant across the water. At the touch of a higher being or with the permission of pure randomness you were granted existence. You were borrowed from beautiful everything.

I like that the word is, “excitations,” like the world was as happy as we were that you were there.

Waves roll triumphant. Sounds ring loud against the quiet — but they end, and waves collapse. Its brief time comes to an end. There’s no use fighting what is preordained by physics.

We grieve as Christians for those who are gone, hopeful that we’ll meet again soon. Waves flatten across the surface, and we are all reunited once more through death with endless nature.

In the physics of the very small, uncertainty is law. There is no smallest distance known, there is no infinite rest. When observed with light new ripples form anew — maybe that’s where the soul resides.

In the entropy virtual particles blink randomly into existence, as if the universe remembers that you were there. By the koi pond I sit, remembering karaoke Christmases and the thank yous I wish I’d said. My memory is five dimensional space, a tesseract of all our moments.

You were a fluctuation, a disturbance of the Higgs field, quiet now, short-stayed, but proud while you were here. We cry now but soon we will tumble too, and physics and nature will continue on in beautiful randomness.