Recently the human race sent an extended "eye" out into space in the form of the James Webb Space Telescope and now the images that eye can see are being transmitted back to earth, allowing our species to see farther than we've ever seen before, and what a sight it is. With all of this it's easy to feel like a speck in the immense state of things and yet the human brain continues to piece things together as best it can.
One thing we know about the brain is that it fills in gaps so that things at least feel like they make sense to us. That's how we get through our days, our years and even our whole lives. In this wonderful TED talk by Dan Dennett he gives a great example of how our brain fills in the gaps of perception (and knowledge) and allows us to (in a sense) "keep going", since we might otherwise get stuck wondering a lot of the time what is "real".
In the talk and demo, Dennett explains why consciousness itself is not necessarily all that we have become convinced it is. Instead, our human brain "fills in the gaps" where things make no sense. We put in place-markers where understanding is missing and as Dennett puts it, "our brain just makes us think we know" something. We insert many ideas, from religions to other metaphysical beliefs which we have used to fill in what some call the God of the gap, and in other areas we use the filling-in of spaces of perception and knowledge (that may not really be there) in order to have a whole picture.
Dennett explains that our brain might make a suggestion about what might be in gaps of missing knowledge or perception and that we either take the suggestion or we don't. Our brains can take a suggestion that we then turn into a belief and then we decide that belief is fact. In other words, and in Dennett's words, your brain just makes you "think" you have the truth, and believe me... you then believe it.
When it comes to beliefs, and especially with beliefs about anxiety, sometimes we have to question what the brain has used to fill in a gap where knowledge or perception is unclear. When we feel uncertain, as many do these days regarding the pandemic and political upheaval around the world, our brains continue on doing what they do, (i.e., filling in the gaps about what we think is going to happen and what we should then do in order to plan for our safety and futures).
One way to address daily anxiety is to take a closer look at what "suggestion" your brain has been taking about your life, the world, and your future. When it comes to safety, we are prone to listen to the brain's old instinct that it's a lion in the bushes, not a kitten. It's danger and not "nothing". It will be very bad and not bearable. Your life will be threatened and not savable, and so on.
Anxiety and depression are when we create stories and belief systems that can take us farther and farther from the truth, but that give us a filler for the gaps where the unknown and uncertainty linger. Many times our anxiety is rooted in the fear of death, and there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that the human body will die one day. What is a hinderance, is the creation of either a delusional belief system that suggests that your human life will not end even though evidence tells you it will, or the creating of meaninglessness and the convincing of oneself that the time between now and that end should not be fully lived. These are falsely created fillers that the brain takes as a suggestion to convince you it's not worth living.
None of this should suggest that we not leave our mind open to more possibility, nor risk believing some of the other suggestions made by our amazing brains to fill in the gaps of life. It simply means that we should watch carefully what it is we have taken as fact. Our beliefs shape our reality. How you see the images that the James Webb Space Telescope has sent back to the eye of human-kind... matters. What the images suggest to your brain is significant because it will shape your entire definition of reality. Your brain might make a thousand different suggestions about what the vastness of these images mean. Which one you buy into deciphers how you see the painting of your life.
"Real magic - refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic". ~Lee Siegel
