The human need for ritual

The dance of new beginnings, of good intentions, this thing at the same time so natural and unnatural: to weigh what happened, to put an unwavering commitment to the future, and all because the conventional numerical sequence has triggered some figures on 01/01 (our computers are full of 01010101, but who knows if they celebrate?). While the universe instead flows in all its forms, visible and crystallized, and in all its forms invisible yet present laterally relative to the human eye, in a single instant that embraces all the past, the future, and that instant imaginary and human that is the present.

I remember a science fiction story, in which an alien race bordered the human beings to the solar system, because their (our) eyes were dangerous: they (we) did collapse the wave function of quantum reality in just one fixed form, while the nature of the universe is to contain all the possibilities, not only one, at the same time. There are boundaries that we can touch, like blind groping, boundaries that represent our being humans: exceeded those, no more than humanity we can talk, but something different, which transforms the concepts of life, individual freedom, conscience.

You could talk about it with a buddhist, sitting doing nothing, no expectations, no desires, empty and yet full of reality; or with a scientist, sitting doing everything possible to understand the deep weft of the universe; few of us could make a choice as them, but everyone at least once in life felt the thin shell - so precious - of things, covering the utter voidness.