The legendary musician, A.R. Rahman, responds to praise with “எல்லாம் புகழும் இறைவனுக்கே” — All praise is for God alone.
Chris Martin of Coldplay deflects credit in a similar way to “Wherever songs come from”.
Behind their humility, I suspect, is an understanding of a profound truth about our existence. The truth that’s preached across many religions - as Dependent Origination in Buddhism, Qadar in Islam, Karma in Hinduism, and Providence in Christianity.
It is this -
Everything and everyone is a domino in a web of dominos that have been falling since the start of the universe.
Or as my grandma would say, “Everything happens for a reason.”
Our lives were under construction billions of years before our first breath.
The Big Bang formed matter. Matter formed stars. Stars formed planets. Earth formed life. Life evolved into humans, our parents — and eventually, you and I.
Then, our genes, upbringing, environment, and experiences determined who we are. That includes our personality, capabilities, values, and sense of self.
Watching my baby grow, I’m struck by how much of my baby’s cognition, temperament, and ability unfold automatically, without conscious design.
But what about hard work? Deliberate choices? Those too are part of the chain. Our drive, character, and intellect emerged from the same cosmic process.
And free will? It depends on how you define it. Processes within us are thinking, choosing, and acting in real-time. Our consciousness is observing and identifying with these processes as “I”, and that feels like independent free will. But the nature of these processes originated beyond the boundaries of our bodies and lifetimes. It is happening within us, but not just by us.
We are a neural network and genetic machinery completely shaped by an unbroken chain of cause and effects before and beyond us, since the start of time until this moment. We are the result and vessel of the forces of creation. And so is everything and everyone around us.
This is likely what Chris Martin and Rahman observed. Their art seems to simply flow through them, without deliberate manufacture. I can’t point to where this post came from either.
What do we do with this idea?
Nothing.
An idea itself is another domino falling. So the effect, if any, will play out naturally. This idea can have a profound effect when you viscerally understand it.
It can greatly loosen the grip of ego and worry. We are not the author. We are not separate from the system. We are a local expression of a spectacular, timeless network. That realization makes pride, shame, and stress absurd.
It invites radical self love, acceptance, ease, and awe — of everything we are and did, and everything there is — because they are exactly what the forces of creation produced. And if reflection leads us to change, that too is part of the same unfolding.
And maybe it can cause us to extend the same grace to everyone else.
Because we are all dominos.