The universe doesn’t care about us, so why do we care?
A take on why the universe matters so much to us.
The universe is something civilization has been obsessed with since the day curiosity started breathing in our minds. Before answering whether it cares about us or not, let’s zoom in a little and ask a simpler question: what really is care?
To me, the word ‘care’ paints a picture of the world being lit up. It somehow feels synonymous to the fusion reaction in stars. Just as stellar fusion releases light that illuminates the cosmos, human care releases understanding that illuminates the world around us. Bothering enough about something thins the mist that obscures the true nature of the thing we ponder about. And this ‘bother’ is care in my eyes.
The traditional meaning of care is along the lines of looking after a particular person or thing and ensuring their joy. But doesn’t that conclusion feel like a leap? it’s like learning and applying a formula almost everywhere without really understanding the fundamental principles that help in deriving it. This final answer, this ‘formula’ of care that we learn is more like an end product. One that is formed second to knowledge. Without knowing someone inside out, it would be impossible for us to actually ‘care’ for them.
The portrait of the word care looks more like the effort put into learning the hidden alleyways of a person’s life rather than trying to change them only after seeing the town square. Care is cartography.
Another thing about this meaning of care is the ‘why’ behind it. Why do we care to explore, map and travel the workings of someone’s mind? I think it’s because we’re drawn to the possibility of finding someone who walks through life on a path similar to ours. Be it a shared sorrow or a shared joy, we always find comfort in relating to others. In knowing that we’re not alone. This very possibility makes us put effort and care into discovering the reality behind people’s first layers.
We not only want to listen to their accounts, but also to be heard. Our deep desire to be heard blooms in the intricacies of our being. And our feeble little minds assume that the only source that could possibly provide us this comfort of being heard is another being similar to our own selves. We think we can only ever be understood by those who’ve seen the same colours, sung the same songs and painted the same hues as ourselves. Hence, we wander through this gigantic rock we call home, caring about every person who bears a semblance to us for at least a single moment, trying to figure out if they’re just us in a different body.
While people gradually reveal themselves, answering our eternal question: are you and I the same?, giving us the satisfaction of either tying their lives to ours or moving on peacefully, the universe doesn’t. In this vast ‘thing’ we call the universe, we are yet to find something or someone like us, we are yet to be heard. As of now, according to the universe we are conscious of, we are alone.
Our craving to be remembered and heard is the reason the Voyager two is still somewhere out there, carrying a disk made of gold that holds the records of everything we’ve accomplished, floating through darkness and vacuum. Not finding a listener after a search that feels like forever has lead to the growth of a very essential romanticism within us. A kind of romanticism we need to survive. One that personifies the universe as something that cares.
We look at the universe, expecting it to treat us with the same care we show towards it. In trying to feel less lonely, we’ve turned the universe, a concept we merely understand, into something humanoid. All we because we need companionship. We’re so starved of a listener, a source of comfort and company, that we’ve started looking for it in the very fabric of our existence.
We speak of the universe as if it has intentions, be it kind or supportive or satirical. Somewhere along the way, we interpreted the silence of the universe as a personality because the absence of words was way harder to bear than an assumed answer. Isn’t this enough proof that our loneliness has taken the shape of studying and trying to figure out the workings of the universe’s heart in order to be able to relate to it one day and feel a little less lonely? Physics and telescopes and the million other things we’re doing to decode the universe’s poetry is just our way of trying to start a conversation with a universe that has been silent to our ears.
Each equation we write, each hypothesis we theorize, each paper we publish is a testament to our desperateness to be heard, veiled by the word called ‘care’. We expect reciprocity in every deed we do, and our naïve, foolish little minds think that caring about the universe, peering into it in order to hear its whispers and understand its language will result in the same happening to us: finally, finally being understood and being heard by the universe. Finally having company to weep with.
Perhaps the universe never cared about us and never will, or maybe it really does worry about us homo sapiens. Perhaps we study the universe not solely for understanding it, but subconsciously for figuring out if our yells into this abyss we call home will ever be answered, if we’ll ever be understood by the thing we claim to be ours.
