Let that sink in for a few breaths. This is not just a phenomenon of the exceedingly small, but the nature of reality in which we lead, create families and communities, and make our difference. What it shows us is that process of observing is not passive, but a process of resonance or co-vibration that particularizes something by how it registers with us. In physics this is called “collapsing a wave function” where a range of possibilities condenses into a thing upon our pinpointed observation.

By flipping around our usual way of sensing, including our sense of self, we confound our filters, invert our thinking and let the new emerge. Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think therefore I am” flips around into the spacious truth that when we don’t have to reify a self, we don’t have to habitually think the same thoughts. We can put up different antenna and new music becomes possible.

In Lincoln’s first inaugural address, he appealed to the nation’s “better angels,” meaning the better aspects of our character, such as good sense and virtue. Seven score and sixteen years later, in the thick of the Trump presidency, historian Jon Meacham spoke to the battle for our better angels in The Soul of America. He recounts the disparities and triumphs of a nation founded on the declaration that all people are created equal and its unequal efforts to live up to that mighty truth.