How High the Moon

It's 2:48 am PST, which isn't my preferred writing time. I am not one of those folks who waits until the world gets quiet and the moon is on the horizon to clack away. For me, the world is never quiet—not at 2:48 a.m., not at 2:48 p.m. The world inside me is constantly churning, a parade of thoughts, dreams, anxieties, and reflection: churn, baby, churn.

Most nights, that parade quiets just enough to let me sleep. But tonight, it didn’t, and in my restless state, I fell into one of those late-night rabbit holes the internet saves just for these hours. I like to imagine the internet has a secret love affair with the moon unveiling its most authentically wonderous and strange parts only when that glowing sphere is illuminated high in the sky. Or maybe I’ve just reached the bottom of my TikTok algorithm. The world may never, or will it?

During my bedside scrolling, I stumbled upon a video about quantum computing—a deep rabbit hole you could live in for an eternity. The summary? Scientific progress is moving faster than ever, courtesy of quantum computing. What once required lifetimes to learn will now take minutes in some cases. The ethical and moral implications of that can be argued over on LinkedIn. I want to focus instead on physics and chemistry. If, for some reason, my high school counselor is reading this and shocked by this focus from me—girl, same.

While scrolling, I landed on a video that was like a breath of fresh air. In a segment for WIRED, Michio Kaku, a physicist and science writer, explained string theory in lamens terms. The last thirty seconds of his explanation grabbed me by the brain. "Physics is the harmonies, the harmonies of vibrating strings. Physics tells us how these vibrations move. What is Chemistry? Chemistry is when these strings bump into each other and form molecules."

In explaining how neutrinos, electrons, and quarks work in science (words I now know), I could see a parallel to how humans form meaningful and powerful connections. Each of us is a particle meant to form and vibrate in this universe in our own way, much like the particles of nature. We are each invaluable to the process of the world becoming. Our becoming is also the world's becoming, a partnership for the ages, so we must form as completely as possible. You must form. As you move through the world, creating your parts, you will bump into other humans (other particles) who are also in their forming; you aren't the same, but when the energies align, your parts together create chemistry. Two separate beings merge to become something together while also being themselves, a necessary step.

When I think about my biggest fears around partnership—romantic ones especially—the fear of losing myself sits at the top. I have no intention of letting myself, my energy, dissolve. And yet, our culture grooms women, in particular, to give themselves away in love, to merge so completely into a partner’s world that they stop becoming altogether. A once fully forming, vibrant human, tuned to a frequency only they could create, becomes muted.

In walks science telling me what I hoped to discover; it doesn’t have to be that way. What if we could vibrate together without dimming? What if we could create chemistry while holding tight to our individual tune? I long to always be the author of a tune all my own. We are an orchestra in creation.

The necessity of each person forming to create the whole of the universe is why our individual becoming is so essential: understanding yourself, learning what you need to vibrate, and holding onto those things, including when the magic of the universe presents you the chance to create chemistry with another. We can be galaxies unto ourselves, even as we merge with others. (I can’t vouch for the science on that one—my rabbit hole only went so far tonight.).

We are the strings of life. Each of us is tuned to a unique universal rhythm (chemistry), and we occasionally combine that sound to create harmony. Still, even in harmony, the individual notes matter—your note matters.

We are the physics of one and sometimes the chemistry of more. We are a song in the playbook of the universe, together and apart.