Having read Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard didn’t make me feel small. Even, I felt ‘vile’ along with the idea that the world would be just fine with fewer people. Albeit I believe now that humans are not ontologically evil, I still feel: that their thoughts were small, compared to the thing that actually makes me feel small: physics.

I was never good at understanding physics deliberately. It was always that I understood physics lessons way later. I understood seventh-grade lessons when I was in eighth grade. I understood eighth-grade lessons when I grew into the ninth grade, et cetera. Physics became a formulas-memorizing and anti-establishment motive of refusal to learn because the teacher failed to paint the beauty of physics in the daily space. It was also my problem with math—although, for math, I am still struggling to understand it’s high-school level lessons.

I was dumbfounded by physics because of science fiction. Doraemon, Marvel superheroes, all the way through any piece by Harlan Ellison, aside from evoking the fantastic, are making me get into more on how the universe works. Science fiction exists beyond the works, but the foundation always and already happens in the universe’s own backyard. To think out the impossible, the mere obligation of science fiction became the trigger of our own curiosity. The same curiosity pushes humanity to break technological boundaries. The technological development then bears a new kind of anxiety which pours into science fiction. Like a circle.

The first physics-themed book that turned me into someone eager to learn how the universe works—and in turn, makes me feel small is The Cartoon Guide to Physics (1991) by Art Huffman and Larry Gonick. All the basic physics concepts are covered, presented, and readily chewed so our reality made more sense through formulas (while if the opposite happens, our reality made nearly zero sense if we had to memorize the formulas before we made to understand the basic principles of our reality)

Then, I met Michio Kaku through his lecture on Big Think titled The Universe in a Nutshell. That lecture familiarized me with the four fundamental forces in physics: strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravitational force. Those four are usually called the standard model. Listening to how the universe works with the movement of matter’s particles made me feel like I understand nothing of this world. Nada.

A YouTube channel called Kurzgesagt then simplifies the model, explaining the universe with parables that touch the conscience. With humility, the knowledge being opened without patronizing: physics and metaphysics became ‘equally’ clueless. I have never felt smarter and dumber after Kurzgesagt’s presentation. Then I read Sette brevi lezioni di fisica (2014) by Carlo Rovelli which read like a literary work instead of a short scientific explanation. Dissecting the inner works of the universe became the work of poetry itself. And I fell far smaller.

Astrophysics for People in A Hurry (2017) by Neil deGrasse Tyson became the break to ponder my smallness—amidst the giant curiosity of humanity. This book stops the grinding and makes us rethink what actually matters. These books break the wheel of capitalism by giving existential crisis to the head of its every ‘gear’. As it should be.