Exhalation: Stories

But the moment of creation is where all causal chains end; inference can lead us back to this moment and no further. That is why the creation of the universe is a miracle: because what happened in that moment was not a necessary consequence of what preceded it.

lucky and I’m not?” Nat saw some others nodding in sympathy. “And I realized, this didn’t feel the same as when I see other people sell a lot of jewelry in their online stores. This is different.” She turned to face Lyle. “I don’t think I’m an envious person by nature, and I don’t think you are, either. We’re not always wanting what other people ha

For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds.

Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not.

“Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.”

When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force.

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.

People used to speculate about a thought that destroys the thinker, some unspeakable Lovecraftian horror, or a Gödel sentence that crashes the human logical system. It turns out that the disabling thought is one that we’ve all encountered: the idea that free will doesn’t exist. It just wasn’t harmful until you believed it.