One of the things I like most about reality, as far as I understand it, is how all the very big things are made of very very small things.

And the closer we look at the very small things, the more we find. Even smaller, even tinier. We keep peering in further, looking for something like the heart of it all, and we keep subdividing parts into tinier parts and the tiniest parts are mostly just… space. And that’s tricky to comprehend, honestly. I can only think about tiny things made of mostly space by imagining them to be bigger. But they’re not. They’re so tiny.

And we’re so tiny. We’re full of verve and rage and ideas, and we’re doing and being and moving, and sometimes we feel big. But mostly the world feels big. The challenges feel big. The changes, the obstacles, the problems, the distance from here to there. Those all seem big, bigger than us. Certainly bigger than me, alone.

But all our biggest things are just one tiny thing connected with another tiny thing, and on and on, until the collection forms something we see as a whole. A complete, big thing. But it isn’t one big thing, impermeable or indestructible. It’s many many tiny things joined together.

If you can put it together, you can take it apart. One tiny piece at a time.

And if it falls apart, it can usually go back together the same way. One tiny piece at a time.

The nice thing about rebuilding something is you get a chance to do it better.