I occasionally finds myself, amidst a quiet contemplation of universal constants or the frankly dizzying mechanics of quantum entanglement, experiencing a sudden, disconcerting shift in priorities. This is not, naturally, due to any catastrophic failure of continental plates, nor should one blame the fluctuating magnetic poles. No, it is far more mundane—and yet infinitely more exhausting.
It is the peculiar, relentless gravitational pull of what modern literature has christened ‘The Need To Process.’
I speak, of course, of those who find their creative impulses suddenly and violently redirected away from the majestic sweep of theoretical physics, or the sublime, terrifying majesty of general cosmology, towards the pressing necessity of writing about themselves. Specifically, the meticulous excavation of deeply felt emotional material.
The problem, as far as I can observe from my comfortable armchair (a chair designed, I might add, with structural integrity sufficient to withstand a minor temporal anomaly), is that my brain appears to have suffered an acute case of hyper-focused artistic triage.
It is true that it tends to do this on a regular basis, like a particularly determined mole digging a hole that keeps filling up. My mind joins in, first a little confused, second, getting into the idea that hyper-focus is fun and then wandering off somewhere and leaving my brain to it.
My brain has deemed the understanding of how dark matter interacts with gravitational lensing to be merely a quaint suggestion, and instead insists upon dedicating all available cognitive horsepower to constructing narratives about ‘surviving trauma.’
You might imagine that the intellectual endeavour required to derive a functional equation linking mass and energy—an undertaking which historically has caused more headaches than enough rum for a small army—is intrinsically satisfying. It is clean. It is definitive. It leaves us with the quiet, academic smugness of knowing that this mechanism actually exists, somewhere in the immutable fabric of reality.
But then there are the late-night bouts of existential composition, spurred by an inner urgency that seems to bypass all rational self-preservation instincts. The sudden, irresistible compulsion to draft a memoir section detailing ‘the overwhelming sensory experience of institutional fluorescent lighting’—an experience which, admittedly, is neither scientifically novel nor cosmologically significant, but requires several thousand words of exquisitely observed detail nonetheless.
It becomes utterly baffling. I have spent years mastering the delightful intricacies of relativistic time dilation, understanding that our perception of linear progress is in fact a deeply flawed and rather arbitrary construct. And yet, when faced with a blank page, my internal editor screams: Nonsense! Write about how the feeling of misplaced cutlery reminded you of a deeper, unresolved anguish!
It suggests a profound misunderstanding—or perhaps an over-emphasis—of where genuine intellectual satisfaction resides. Cosmology offers grand scale; it gives us perspective. It whispers that our little lives are merely fleeting sparks on a damp sphere orbiting a surprisingly predictable star. This is genuinely comforting, if profoundly humbling.
But the creative mandate issued by certain psychological states suggests instead: Your life was intensely personal, deeply meaningful, and must be rendered into narrative form by dawn.
I begin to wonder which endeavour truly requires the greater commitment of sheer, exhausting force of will. Is it the Herculean task of mapping out a universe whose boundaries defy human comprehension? Or is it the even more arduous, soul-draining effort of distilling years of deeply inconvenient emotional detritus into chapter headings that sound vaguely literary?
The truth, I suspect, is that both require an utterly staggering amount of psychic energy. But the former provides the occasional, glorious ‘Aha!’ moment that genuinely shifts human understanding. The latter simply ensures that, for posterity, we can all read about how desperately inconvenient our particular existence was to ourselves.
And for that, dear reader, we must be profoundly grateful. Or perhaps just slightly bewildered. It is a considerably more demanding form of academic pursuit than grappling with the mysteries of stellar collapse, and I dare say, rather less amusing.