Ask a partner or an amicable ex whom you had a real connection with about a picture they find themselves looking at or remembering you by: it’s always going to be something plain, blurry, goofy, cute, dressed down, overly cheerful, cheesy, dangerous or even downright ugly.

The little insignificant notes, every hurried scribble and todo with a reflexive inked heart, stored along with the big loving gestures in a box, and treated the same. Maybe even treated better.

You could think of yourself as the prettiest or plainest in the world, in your eyes, but with the right person, you’re pared down into parts, each first lustfully objectified to their evolutionary purpose, then infused with humour and playfulness and memory and spirituality and mythology.

There are beings in this world — a soul mate, your children, a parent, a friend, a protege, the animals you care for, the garden you nurtured, a chance encounter — who know you from the way you make them feel, for the innate thrilling calming unexpectedness of your existence.

Humans are a deep transformative magic, bootstrapping, conquering and subverting the dispassionate, godless, bloody laws of nature. Everything we touch with curiosity, care or purpose becomes a part of our history, of our collective soul, even if it lacks sentience on its own.

For all the mucking up of the world we flagellate ourselves for, humans are nature, and we are the best of nature. When we criticize the frightening evil in ourselves, evil that so effortlessly scales and spirals, it should be so that we can feel it, and transform it, and reach our potential.

I don’t think the answer to the big questions of the universe is “love.” It can’t be, love is just a beautiful foundation. I think the answer to the big questions, and the reason the big questions exist, will be whatever final, eternal form humanity is capable of becoming.