I was talking with a friend yesterday about how insignificant we are and yet significant at the same time. Somewhere in that conversation, something clicked. It struck me that we’re a bit like Schrödinger’s cat. We exist in both states at once. We’re utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and yet, at the same time, we’re hugely significant in our role within it.
It’s a strange but oddly comforting contradiction. The idea that both can coexist without cancelling each other out. When I think about cosmic insignificance, it gives me perspective. It’s not bleak; it’s freeing. When you step back and look at the scale of things, you realise how tiny we are. All the noise, the stress, the little dramas we let eat away at us, they simply don’t matter. We’re not even a blink in time. That thought doesn’t make me feel small. It helps me breathe.
It’s not about telling yourself that you are nothing, it’s about realising the power of nothingness. Because when you look closer, there’s another truth. We have the privilege of living this enormous life, with all the good things that we can derive from it. Not only that, to the people around us, we are significant. Our choices, our kindness, our humour, our patience, they ripple outward in ways we rarely see. A small act of generosity can shift someone’s day. A moment of understanding can change how someone feels about themselves. That’s personal significance. It’s quiet, but it matters. And it’s powerful.
I’ve faced financial worries as I’m sure we all have, but in the grand scheme of things, ask yourself this question: “If I lost everything, my house, my car, my money, everything, absolutely everything, would I have at least one friend to turn to who would take care of me until I got myself sorted again?” The answer for most of us, I would hope, is yes, me included. So actually, those worries could be nothing if we wanted them to be nothing. When we rise above our troubles, they shrink to their true size, often no bigger than our thoughts made them.
On the flip side, think about the positive impact we can have on someone else’s life, often without even realising it. A few words of encouragement, a small act of kindness, a bit of time spent listening when someone needs it; they seem insignificant in the moment, but they can shift the course of another person’s day, or even their life, in ways we’ll probably never know. And they might even carry that forward. Think about the power of that. They treat someone else better because of how we made them feel, and that ripples outward again in a ‘butterfly effect’. One gentle flap of the wings here can become a small hurricane of good somewhere else. Multiply that by every quiet act of compassion, patience, and understanding across the world, and suddenly our personal significance doesn’t feel small at all. It feels enormous.
Because when you strip it all back, what really matters are the people who care enough to catch you when you fall. The rest is just noise. In the entirety of one’s life, those things are nothing. We should just enjoy life for what it’s giving us, not what it might take away.
So maybe that’s the balance. We can hold both truths without conflict. When something goes wrong, or when life throws us nonsense, we can lean into the insignificance. It helps us let go. But when we have the chance to make a difference, we lean into the significance. That’s where meaning lives.
So perhaps that’s what I meant when I said we’re like Schrödinger’s cat. We’re insignificant in the bad things and significant in the good things. We exist in both states, and the art lies in knowing when to be which. Maybe, in the end, it’s just a case of Schrödinger’s cat picking his battles?. Or was it her battles? Maybe the cat is both male and female until observed.