On the Calculation of Volume, Episode 435
How do we counter the stories in ourselves that render our lives flat, meaningless and mechanical? And how might we find sources of life inside ourselves and around us that support our participation, relationship and contribution, especially when we are feeling afraid or disoriented? A conversation about the everyday, about a radical appreciation of the sacredness of everything, and about breathing ourselves bigger to meet the one life that is offered to us.
In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.
This week's Turning Towards Life hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our source for this week:
On the Calculation of Volume
It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of inconceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many they are. That in this unfathom-able vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.
Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.
Solvej Balle, from ‘On the Calculation of Volume’, Vol 1
Photo by Mario Losereit on Unsplash