There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.
There is a hangover from a defeat like Denmark - ask any player about when they've had a bad game, it's still in there somewhere in the back of your mind.
Reading 'Moby-Dick' was really a sort of transformative literary experience for me.