Ever felt a little in over your head? Where life just feels far too much?
Or how about when we forget that our life is not the only one being lived – that other people aren’t merely accessories to OUR lives.
I’m 100% certain that everyone has put someone, or something, on a pedestal, making them ‘larger than life’. Letting concepts, ideals and ideas be magnified into occupying everything we know.
I think we often forget that we are a hell of a lot smaller than we think we are. Our leaders, whom we think are big enough to run the world, are merely people. Small people. Who live in small houses. In small provinces/states. In a small country. On a tiny planet. In a miniscule solar system. Of a tiny galaxy. (I could continue if I were slightly more educated on the topic).
I like being put in my place every now and again. Not by people, but rather by the universe. It puts things back into perspective for me. It makes me appreciate life a lot more, and it makes things seem easier. As a Christian, it puts me in awe of how massive and magnificent and indescribable my God is. That’s why I love looking at the stars. I think it is something that I need to do more often.
It helps to know that the self-righteous leaders, boastful elders and proud youth are just as insignificant as you are. It sounds pessimistic, sure. But, look at it from the other side of things – it puts everyone on equal -footing. It’s almost laughable when someone thinks that they have unrestricted power.
I’m not nearly saying that what these people do have no effect to us on Earth. Leaders have killed thousands in war. ‘Bullies’, for lack of a better word, have destroyed many a self-esteem. Economists have thrown uncountable numbers of people into debt. And everyday things start to feel more and more hopeless.
That’s when I look to the stars. That’s when I remember just how insignificant I am. That’s when I remember that those people are just that… PEOPLE. And, that’s when I remember just how insignificant they are and how it, in its own right, levels the playing field. Ironically, it is when I feel my most powerful. I CAN make a difference, for the better, on this not-so-massive planet. I CAN take on those power-hungry dictators. We can stop suffering and make a better world for those around us.
One of the first times that I felt insignificant was when I watched a DVD called Indescribable by Louis Giglio. It is a Christian DVD, but woaaaah, it is interesting! I would recommend checking that out if you ever have the opportunity.
Another humbling moment presented itself when I heard Carl Sagan’s (astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences ) speech on The Pale Blue Dot. The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph taken of Earth in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft nearly 6 BILLION kilometers away. Here’s what he had to say:
“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, p. 6
There is nothing more I can add to that.
Good night, and I love you all.
xxx
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