How I Found Meaning Out of the Mess of Life

Lessons from Newton and Quantum physics

Have you ever felt your life has been wasted on wishes and hopes that never materialized?

Ya, me too.

I had this ridiculous — but real — idea that since I had sacrificed so much of my life’s aspirations on the altar of full-time parenting, God owed me big-time and that my next phase would be a cinch, a done-deal, and like magic, I would find myself in a lucrative career.

I know, I know, rather fanciful thinking, but that was my view of God at the time — like a genie in a bottle, he handed out rewards for good behavior.

How wrong I was.

Over the next 15 years, I tried unsuccessfully to redirect my life — I got a master’s degree and set up a small business as a therapist. But each time I made a step forward, something major happened that completely derailed me, and every time I thought either something was wrong with me, or God was testing me for some unknown reason — perhaps to make me a “better person to serve him.” I couldn't make sense of it and often slid into despair.

Newton’s clockwork universe

But then I ran across a book called The Luminous Web by Barbara Brown Taylor, and it changed my perspective entirely. She took me on a spiritual journey through Newtonian physics, Quantum, and Chaos theories that gave me a path through what seemed like utter nonsense and meaninglessness.

If you don’t know your Newtonian physics, it describes a worldview governed by the idea that the basic structure of the universe is the atom, and when something is broken down to its smallest part, it can be understood and managed. This view also believes that everything operates by a cause and effect model and runs like clockwork. Therefore, if one part breaks, all that is needed is to fix it or replace it.

As Barbara Brown Taylor said,

In this clockwork universe, the way to keep the whole thing running is to focus on the parts. If one of them breaks down, fix it. if it cannot be repaired, replace it. There is nothing wrong with the whole that cannot be fixed by tinkering with the parts. There is no such thing as the whole. The individual is the fundamental unit of reality. (p.40)

Living in this mindset, I often felt broken, but nothing would fix me. Since I could not be repaired or replaced, I seriously wondered why I was on earth anymore. I tried therapy for a while, but the therapists also followed the Newtonian worldview: I would see them for one hour once a week for a relatively short period of time. How much more “atomized” can you get?

Even though I was an individual, many systems influenced how I thought — my family, religious upbringing, education, and where I lived. I never felt like I could convey the myriad aspects of my life to explain why I was sitting in the client's chair. So often, the centrifugal force of those systems was too great to overcome on my own. It was discouraging.

Enter mysterious Quantum theory

Then I read about Quantum theory and how it affects our lives, though in hidden and unseen ways.

For this article, I am reducing this vast and improbable science to this:

One of the strangest and most important consequences of quantum mechanics is the idea of “entanglement.” When two quantum particles interact in the right way, their states will depend on one another, no matter how far apart they are. You can hold one particle in Princeton and send the other to Paris, and measure them simultaneously, and the outcome of the measurement in Princeton will absolutely and unequivocally determine the outcome of the measurement in Paris, and vice versa.

As I became aware of the impact of Quantum physics in my life, I saw what I had intuitively known all along — not everything could be fixed, nor was it practical to replace or redo. Instead, as Barbara Brown Taylor said,

It requires a different worldview — not a clockwork universe in which individuals function as discrete springs and gears, but one that looks more like a luminous web, in which the whole is far more than the parts.

So I quit trying to find a way to fix my life in a stilted “follow-the-rules-and-God-will-bless-you” kind of way that governed my younger years. Most often, fixing things is what got me all tangled up anyway because when things fell apart, I looked for someone to blame.

Instead, I began to dance with my life and gave up trying to make it fit into a mold. I paid attention to what brought me joy, where beauty was, what gave me fulfillment, and pursued those. I let go of a lot of “have to's” and surrendered to the unfolding of life, messy as it was.

Finally, Chaos theory

The last piece of the puzzle brought it all together — chaos theory.

In simple terms,

It is the branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences.

In other words, the butterfly effect — the minutest change in a puff of air at the right time could create either blue skies or a hurricane. In other words, someone’s best-laid plans can be derailed by a sneeze or cough at the right time, setting in motion a series of events that could not be predicted or planned for.

As Barbara Brown so aptly put,

All you know for sure is that your best-laid plans are susceptible to chaos, and — conversely — that what looks to you like the worst kind of chaos is really a beautiful double spiral in three dimensions. Whatever else you have faith in, have faith in this: there is a strange attractor at work in your life that will not let you fly off the page. (p. 72)

There is order in chaos and chaos in order.

That has been my life thus far, and for some reason, it gives me comfort. I no longer believe I have to “get it right” to appease a taskmaster of a God because chaos is inherently built into the universe. Things just happen, and they are not a punishment or a test.

I now know that chaos won’t last forever, and beauty is always just around the corner.

That brings me hope.

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