We are yogurt

Probably

We’re told that the universe is forever expanding, i.e. it is infinite. This as a concept is quite a difficult one to swallow for humans. When digits go above the hundreds of thousands we start to struggle to make sense of them. A million seconds is 11.5 days, a billion seconds is 31 years. So, when you talk about the size of the galaxy, let alone the universe, it’s so vast that the time to travel or the distance of it doesn’t compute in our brains.

I ferment my own yogurt at home. I always get a bit of a confused look when I tell people this, but essentially in most probiotic capsules you only get a fraction of the amount of bacteria needed to colonize the gut effectively. There’s a huge rise in digestive system issues and related cancers, (which I would largely attribute to a mix of ultra-processed shite diets, environmental pollutants and chronic stress), so one of the ways to decrease the chances of such disease is to ensure you have a well-balanced, healthy microbiome. Due to this, I ferment my own specific strains for 36 hours, turning the probiotic value from 5 billion micro-organisms to 100s of billions. It’s also delicious which is an added bonus.

So I was sat eating my breakfast, which is the homemade yogurt, raw honey, berries and some nuts/seeds and I was thinking about the microscopic bacteria in the yogurt and what was going on in their world. They’re so small that whilst they’re (likely) not conscious in the way that we understand it, they’re still living some kind of existence. An ocean-like terrain full of valleys of fat globules, mountains of protein clusters and currents of liquid moving between them. To us it’s just a white, semi-solid mass but to the bacteria it’s their galaxy. We’re so infinitely bigger than they are that they have no knowledge of our existence whatsoever. Even an insect wouldn’t be aware of a human nearby, only of the vibrations, movement or shadows; so to them we’re more like a “weather event” than a living creature. A lot of heavy contemplation going on here over breakfast but this got me thinking, are we just yogurt?

I couldn’t shake the idea. To be clear, I don’t literally mean yogurt but is it possible that we’re so infinitesimally small in comparison to some larger “being” that the universe and all its billions/trillions of galaxies is a microscopic environment in some larger “things” world. We view ourselves as the be all and end all. We think we’re the “big dogs” but if the universe is infinite, we’re definitely not alone but moreover, we could just be the overgrowth of a mould like substance in the corner of an adolescent, squid-like creature’s bedroom. Here we are thinking we’re all important but in reality our entire history could be the equivalent of a second in the life of a being infinitely larger than we are.

My wife already thought I was weird enough before I bored her with this hypothesis recently. She found it quite a depressing concept but to be honest, I find it all quite comforting. We’re all guilty of taking ourselves so seriously that the thought that we could be so insignificant makes me worry about bullshit things a little bit less. It’s a little like the way conventional religion comforts us. If something is so much bigger and more important than us, it’s humbling and in a strange way; it makes us feel safe.

Anyway, I’ve not written a post in what has been weeks but felt I wanted to get this off my chest. Share with people who will likely think it’s as ludicrous as my long-suffering wife thought it. Life’s a little busy at the minute and I am really finding it difficult dedicating the time to writing longform posts but I’m going to attempt to go for once a fortnight.

With love, 
Waylon

If this piece touched you or sparked something, please reach out directly. I’d love to talk.