You Exist Because You Act

The default state of existence is non-existence. What we call existence isn’t a rest state. Existence is a product of action. Before the Big Bang, there was no space, no time, no matter—no framework within which “existence” could even be said to exist. Then something happened. An event. An action. And from that singular action came everything.

This idea isn't just scientific; it’s deeply philosophical. In Taoism, it is said that the Tao is not a thing but a process—an ever-flowing motion. Laozi wrote that the nameless is the origin of heaven and earth; naming (an act) gives rise to the myriad things. Existence, then, is inseparable from action. In a different tradition, Heidegger argued that Being isn’t a static state; it is something revealed through Dasein, the unique human capacity to engage with and care about the world. In his terms, to be is to be-in-the-world—always already acting.

Even in physics, specifically in quantum mechanics, this principle holds strange but powerful sway. A particle exists in multiple states until observed—until an action collapses possibility into reality. Without observation, without that interaction, there is only potential, not actuality.

Viewed this way, life is not a continuous state of being, but a continuous process of becoming. We are transient sparks, “blurbs” of existence, emerging through a chain of actions. Our birth was action. Our growth, expression, and decay—action. Death is the cessation of action, and perhaps the reversion to default: the unexist.

But I think, as conscious beings, we possess the power to generate existence. We write, and the words live on. We paint, and form appears where once there was blankness. We plant a tree, and its roots split soil that was previously untouched. These acts stretch our limited presence into something larger, more enduring. In this way, the zero-to-one idea—the generative moment where something becomes—becomes sacred.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt saw action as the most human of conditions—a way to insert oneself into the fabric of the world. Not through survival, but through initiative. Through creation. Through impact. Every time we act with intention, we extend our thread in the tapestry of Being.

So maybe the universe is less like a container of things, and more like a process of things happening. We are not passive inhabitants—we are catalysts. And when we stop, when no more action occurs, there is no more existence. Just the quiet return to what has always been the default: unexist.