Milkless cereals...
The Cosmic Reason There’s No Bread- Probably
It was a Tuesday morning, my day off, when I opened the kitchen cabinet, peered inside, and asked the most profound question humanity has ever faced: “Why is there no bread?”
It seems trivial — a minor domestic inconvenience. But as any philosopher (or mildly hungry person) knows, one small question can unravel the entire structure of the universe.
See, I was supposed to buy bread yesterday. I even made a mental list — bread, eggs, dish soap — the trinity of groceries. But somewhere between the Uber drop off and aisle twenty-five, something went wrong. I remembered I also needed to buy coffee; wandered off to get them, passed by the snack section, and saw those spicy chips that make your tongue question your life choices, and the next thing I know, I am at home with a bag of regret and absolutely no bread.
So, really, the bread is gone because of chips.
But I only bought the chips because I was stressed after work. And I was stressed because departmental manger said, “We’ll circle back to that later,” which everyone knows is code for you’re in trouble but we’re saving it for Monday. Naturally, I sought comfort in carbohydrates and sugar. So, truly, the bread is gone because of my boss.
But really, my boss is only my boss because of capitalism — an economic system born from centuries of social evolution. And that evolution only happened because about 3.8 billion years ago, a bunch of chemical compounds on early Earth decided to start replicating themselves. So the bread is gone because of primordial life.
But life only exists because comets delivered water and organic molecules to Earth billions of years ago. And those comets exist because the solar system formed from a giant cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago. So the bread is gone because of stellar debris.
But that gas cloud only existed because ancient stars exploded in supernovae, scattering their elements across space. Those stars were born from hydrogen, created during the Big Bang. Which means, technically, the bread is gone because 13.8 billion years ago, space itself decided to dramatically expand out of nothing.
Now, this raises an interesting question: did the universe know, 13.8 billion years ago, that by expanding, it would one day create galaxies, planets, oxygen, single-celled organisms, Hominids, Homo sapiens sapiens, yeast, supermarkets, and me — a hungry person on my day off standing in my kitchen at 07:30 a.m. asking the void why there’s no bread?
Maybe.
Because if physics is deterministic, everything that happens — every star that forms, every loaf that burns, every snack I accidentally binge on— is simply the inevitable consequence of what came before. If I could somehow rewind the universe and hit “play” again with exactly the same conditions, I'd forget the bread every single time?
But that can’t be true, right? Surely, we have free will. We make choices. We are masters of our own destiny! (Mostly. Except for when Netflix releases a new series.)
Still, when you think about it, our brains are made of atoms that obey physical laws, and those atoms came from stars, which came from the Big Bang. So if the motion of every atom is fixed by what came before, then maybe every thought you’ve ever had was just the universe acting itself out — and “deciding” to forget the bread was as inevitable as gravity.
Which would mean we’re just cosmic billiard balls, rolling across the table of spacetime, pretending we have a say in where we land. We think we’re choosing our shots, but maybe the cue was set in motion 13.8 billion years ago.
Still, even if that’s true, does it really matter? The bread’s still gone, and the chips are still delicious.
So maybe the point isn’t whether life is predetermined or not. Maybe it’s about accepting that somewhere between the Big Bang and the bakery aisle, the universe simply decided that this morning, I'd be having cereal for breakfast.
Without milk. Again.