Today I’ve turned 37. There’s something about getting older that’s subtle enough to be invisible when you’re younger. One can be a little more carefree when young. At 37 I feel the aches of my body more on bad days. I notice every new grey hair. I’m more aware of my need to be intentional about remembering. I’m young enough that I have energy to do hard things; but I’m old enough to know that negligence has a real cost.
I’ve experienced enough life to know the value of real friendships, to understand the pain of betrayals, and the importance of loyalty. I’ve seen high highs, and felt the endless cold of low lows. I know what love is in its various forms; and know what it costs to find and sustain it. I know what it feels like to seen the shadow of death because of malice; and miraculously walk away fortunate enough to see new days because of grace.
I’ve felt the headwinds of spiritual doubt and rudderlessness. I’ve also felt the certainty of revelation and the clarity it gives. I know what it feels like to doubt your own certainty, and to constantly test it to verify your grounding in sanity. To be honest, a lot of this was true at 36; but this year feels different. I’m more sure about the truths that I’ve been uncertain about; more happy in my own skin regardless of what that may seem like to others. Less bothered. More thankful.
What about life going forward? One day at a time. Something I’ve learned building Nkwashi, and more recently Carbon Canopy, is that big projects, or anything at scale really, are tackled a day at a time. Sure, you have to maximize what the day can do; and collaboration is how you do that. However, in the end, life is lived a day at a time. So that’s my approach at the moment. I’ll dream about the future, but all that dreaming has to translate to a lived day. If it can’t fit into what I can reasonably do within 24 hours, then I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I’ve discovered that I get tired just like anyone else, and passion for something doesn’t take away physical exhaustion or even mental weariness. Adding to the load invites diminishing returns; and so any additional effort needs to come with greater yield on time. If I can only give slices of the day, the return on the effort for those slices has to be significantly greater than the physical cost, and also the opportunity cost of not applying myself to my existing effort streams. Funny enough, that’s meant that I’ve ended up doubling down, or better put, going all in on land development; carbon projects, renewable energy, sustainable forestry, pastoral agriculture and soil/rangeland carbon; rural land development and more efficient urban land development. More of what we’ve been doing, just deeper and broader.
That principle; broader and deeper, has led me to finding peace by accepting the rational order in the universe. The order of the universe is a source of comfort. The fact that physics points very clearly to a universe intentionally created and sustained by a living God has been incredibly satisfying. Mapping out the physics, understanding how it relates to reality and purpose; it’s been a surprising intellectual and spiritual journey. I hope to continue learning more and sharing what I discover.
The deeper I’ve gone, the harder it has become to see the universe as brute or accidental. Modern physics keeps stripping away the old picture of reality as dead matter moving through empty space. Quantum mechanics gives us possibility rather than fixed local properties; Bell’s theorem and contextuality rule out the old hidden classical substrate; decoherence explains how stable histories emerge without making classical matter ultimate; black-hole thermodynamics, Landauer’s principle, and holography show that information is physically load-bearing. Holography suggests that bulk reality may be encoded in boundary-like information, and black-hole physics gives the clearest clue: the information content of a region scales with its horizon area rather than its volume.
Relativity weakens the idea of one universal present; and quantum-gravity approaches point toward the whole history of the world as an ordered block where past, present, and future co-exist, rather than a moment-by-moment accident. Taken together, these form a constraint: possibility must be held, intelligible order must be specified, and determinate history must be actualized. That structure is triadic. And because the ground of the whole block cannot be just one event inside the block, it must be omni-temporal: present to all time without being contained by time. The result is not an abstract force. It is not Neoplatonic emanation. It is much closer to the Trinitarian living God: the Father who contains infinite possibility, the Logos who speaks order, and the Holy Spirit who sustains reality and gives life.
If the universe is beautifully made and intentional, even with all its complexity, then my role in it isn’t accidental. Whether big or small, grand or hidden, it’s intentional. Which makes it purposeful. I have agency, and that too is not accidental. It’s part of the point.
A lot of smart people have come to believe in simulation theory, even though it has an inherent weakness. If we live in a simulation, then where does it stop? One can never know how many levels of simulation and simulators exist. Whereas the physics maps to something more definite: the ground of meaning as triadic consciousness, with our own consciousness being a local-scale example of this, a natural experiment and proof of the cosmic omni-temporal triadic consciousness underpinning existence. Knowing this gives a huge amount of comfort. Every moment of every day feels like walking in a living artifact saturated with purposefulness, meaning, and intent. Even theodicy has meaning; it’s the shadow of agency, and shows that sentience has real cost.
Getting to this place was not obvious. I’m thankful to be here. I'm glad that at 37 I can still be filled with wonder and whimsy. I hope for more of it.
