My brain pulls focus by finding enlightenment

Matter is defined as anything that takes up space and can be weighed. It cannot be created or destroyed, only moved.

This morning I am taking up space in a small and furtive way. I make my tea gently, in case the rattling spoons on china should cause the flock of pigeons nesting in my head to panic and fly away in a storm of feathers, knocking all the desk toys askew. It’s one of those mornings when I haven’t slept and my mind has been replaced with tired birds and pendulums. Things are moving up there but they only produce cooing sounds. 

It is in this state of dreamlike sleep deprivation that I fold myself into a window seat and gaze at a tree over the rim of my tea.

It’s a good tree. A wide parasol of a fir, capturing the morning sunlight in a dusky, glittering haze between green cones.

I love this tree in the morning. I’ve imagined writing a poem but got stuck on the word luminescent. I tried to take a snap of a jay landing in the branches which came out as a close up of my thumb. This morning I simply enjoy it. My brain, unwilling to put up with any activity where it’s not the focus, drops a zen bomb.

“If this tree could observe you,” my brain says, in a special mystical voice. “It would feel wonder.”

This is surprisingly affectionate coming from my brain, and I pause, touched.

“...Thanks?”

“Not you. Anything,” my brain snaps. This is more like it. My brain drops back into its mystical tone.

“What I’m trying to say is, if that tree could think about things, it would feel awe.”

I look at the tree which rustles in a way that feels confused. It’s just a tree. It’s doing the best it can. 

My brain sighs.

“Take a rock,” it says.

“Take it where?”

There is a long silence. 

“Say you have a science gun,” my brain says, in a voice of strained patience.

“Okay.” I picture a gun. It looks like a lollipop that produces bubbles.

“If you point this science gun at any piece of matter, a brick, an ant, a tree, and shoot it, that matter becomes capable of complex, self reflective thought.”

“Okaay.”

“One of the first things that it would do is feel a sense of awe at the world around it,” my brain says, in the voice you use for discovering e=mc². 

I can’t help feeling that the first thing an ant would do if suddenly smacked with a huge prefrontal cortex is scream for a really long time.

“Don’t be so literal,” my brain snaps. “The point is, that I’ve proved something amazing about the universe.”

“Explain?”

My brain sighs happily. There is nothing it loves more in the world than being asked to explain.

“Matter floats around in the universe. When the conditions are right, it forms patterns such as planets, life, dragon fruit. We are the most complex life we know of, being self aware…”

“Well, dolphins…”

My brain shushes me.

“And our common trait is that we feel awe at the world around us.”

“Our common trait is hitting each other with sticks. And throwing stuff. Ooh, and weird hair…”

“Outside of our base instincts and survival mechanisms, we feel awe.”

“Ability to digest milk…”

My brain shushes me again. I try to focus.

“What about Elon Musk? Or Crazy Frog.”

“Crazy Frog isn’t a person,” my brain says witheringly.

“Elon Musk,” I say, embarrassed. I obviously know that.

My brain pauses. We both find the idea of Elon Musk appreciating a tree hard to visualise. 

“Everyone, when not buried in base instincts, tied up in trauma responses or obsessively trapped in their own brain...”

“That’s you.”

“Yes, yes.” My brain is struggling to absorb the recent information that it is Part Of The Problem. “When fully in their bodies and being mindful, humans feel awe at the world.”

“Even Elon.”

“Whatever,” my brain mutters. I let it go. 

“Sooo…”

“So, that means that matter is deeply encoded with self love!” my brain finishes triumphantly.

I sip my tea. It tastes like jam.

“Because anytime matter gets complicated enough to be aware of itself, it feels awe!” My brain adds.

“So, this means that my idea that the fir tree feels fluffy and pretty is true,” I posit.

“Well no,” my brain says, patronisingly. “But if it could think, then maybe it would think that.”

“Okay,” I say, thinking about tea, and how far away the kettle is.

“Okay? Don’t you get what this means?” my brain says, aghast.

I take a punt. “We’re made out of dust that loves itself?”

“Not dust, but sure. Isn’t that comforting? To know that the very building blocks of the universe contain dormant wonder? Solid, liquid, gas, plasma, love.”

“Steady now,” I say in a careful voice. We sound like we did when we were 13 wearing tie dye and making shampoo out of lavender. If we sound too new age, I’m pretty sure we’ll be exiled from society and forced to live alone in a turnip garden in Glastonbury.

“I don’t care,” says the brain, brashly. “And I’ll tell you another thing.”

It pauses. 

“Tell me the thing,” I say, wearily.

“If the most complicated pattern matter can make is a form that is aware enough to feel self love…”

“That we know of,” I interrupt. I’m still holding out for mind reading octopus wizards.

“Then that means that we, as a pattern of matter, have achieved pretty much the coolest and most important thing we could achieve, right now, by admiring this tree. This fantastically rare moment is the pinnacle of what matter can do. It’s basically Sam carrying Frodo up Mount Doom and Spartacus rolled into one.”

“I have quite a lot of cool and important things to do before I die,” I say primly. “As soon as I’m well again. Running, dancing, drinking a Manhattan, befriending a raven…”

“But as an expression of matter, we don’t actually end,” the brain says, pivoting.

I have not had enough tea for this.

“Matter can’t be created or destroyed, so when we go, we just become part of everything. Which includes being there at races and dances and in drinks and lakes and…” the brain casts around for my favourite things. “...In bakeries.”

“At Heilung gigs,” I add. 

“Exactly. Sucked to miss that.”

“And actually being invited to Caitlin’s baby shower.”

“Specific, and technically in the past, but sure. The point is, as matter, we’re part of everything that happens. And even though we won’t be us anymore, we’ll be part of something endless, complex and imbued with feeling. So even though we can’t do a lot of things right now, and we’re worried that we won’t get well enough to do them, we’re not missing out because we’re part of absolutely everything that is. It’s just not possible for us to know that and be this pattern of matter right now.”

There is a long silence while I let that sink in. I rub my eyes, which have become dusty.

“You know what this means,” I say eventually.

“What?” my brain says, eager to hear how this spiritual revelation has landed.

“We can write “I mattered” on my tombstone.”

There is a long silence.

“I mattered. Get it?”

I am a genius.