Every morning, I pray to a God I don’t believe in.

I sit on the porch, look to the sky, and wonder:

“Why am I here?”

Everything seems perfect. The moment, as it exists, seems too profound to be real. I can breathe, I can feel, I can think…

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Since the dawn of human consciousness, we have created stories to explain the inexplicable reality of existence.

And, for humans, the stories we create take an introspective shape. The deities we imagine for ourselves; the great man, woman, or gig in the sky are just that: our imagination. We create Gods to give reason for the madness of mortality.

We interpret the events that unfold, and the decisions of other people, as manifestations of our invented ideology.

Everything that isn’t us, is God.

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I look around my surroundings; the birds chirping in the sky, the Fed Ex truck dropping packages across the street, and my own skin, sweltering in the mid-afternoon sun. I feel the heat and I notice:

“I’m thinking right now.”

I project thoughts towards the future and ask for the means to get there. I ask for the ability to positively influence the people I’m around. I ask for inspiration and the ability to be creative, but, in the back of my mind I know…

“God is just an idea”.

The fact is: nobody knows why we’re here, or what created us.

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Everything we experience is a reproduction of something that has already been created.

The tree in my front yard is a product of biological evolution. The vehicle in my driveway is a result of human ingenuity, an idea that started on a piece of paper, resulting in a solid machine. The homes around the cul-de-sac were crafted the same way. Everything we experience is a collaboration of ideas and influence, either from nature, or from our own innate creativity.

When we create, we take elements that are given, digest them with our perception, and output  to form an expression. Filtered through our “self” and projected as something “new”.

But, where did the original form come from?

What caused the first creative burst of energy; the particle that attracted itself to create a compound; the elements that fused together to produce a solid, liquid, or gas?

Nobody knows.

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We have the ability to influence our environment and create solid representations of our ideas.

The keyboard I’m writing on is a byproduct of hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. Without the invention of language, there would be no words to press. Without Michael Faraday’s advent of electricity, there would be no spark to ignite symbols on screen. And without Bill Gates, there would be no “Windows” for me to peer through.

The entirety of a life experience is the result of men and women who have challenged themselves to pursue change. They looked out into the world and refused to accept “where we are”. They understood that to affect change, they would have to assimilate with an ever-evolving nature, a constantly changing environment, in pursuit of “where we could be”.

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Nothing in life is stagnant. From a molecular level, the atoms that make up matter (electrons, protons, and neutrons) vibrate constantly. They never stop moving.

Even our universe, the cosmos that makes up the night sky, is in perpetual motion. And, it is expanding exponentially.

While you’re reading, the universe is reaching out, creating itself quicker and quicker. The planet we live on, an ecosystem that has a perfect set of variables to sustain an environment for life, moves in orbit with our Sun. And our Sun careens through space, gradually inching closer to a black hole at the center of our galaxy. And, while all this is happening, I sit on a porch while the Sun burns heat into my skin.

Forget fact, theory, science, and faith. My skin hurts. And it’s a miracle.

—

I sit on a chair and pray to a God I don’t believe in. I accept that I will never know “why I’m here” and I feel comforted.

I feel comfort because I’m participating in something that can’t be explained: A lifetime of experience in the form of “Human”.

In this moment, as the entirety of life unfolds in front of my eyes, I decide my destiny. No one else. And, my skin is seriously burning…

I need to get in the shade.

I’ve been burned before and it’s the worst. It hurts to sleep, it hurts to shower, and it hurts to shirt…y’know, like wear a shirt… and, I need to make sure that doesn’t happen.

So, I move my body the same way I move my thoughts…

Towards the future.