We are so small …
7.437 billion of us exist on this rock in the middle of the Solar System, yet we have not filled it. Vast areas of the planet are empty, unlivable, full of water, or undiscovered. We walk long roads between huge tracks of forest and field, and imagine that we are present in this world, completely or partially, emphatically here. Our dreams are earth shaking, our plans complex, and we cannot escape the sensation that the limits of our existence track the edges of the known universe, as well.
It isn’t egotistical or arrogant, it is simply that we cannot truly know what lies beyond us. We are our own wall builders.
What we miss is the landscape around us, the fields of stars and the depths of the great waters. We feel the wind but do not comprehend it until it bears down on us in all it’s strength. The sun is simply a bright light in the sky until we cannot escape it’s heat or we drift away from one another and the chill settles in from its absence. But, even then, if we did not know the sun was just another star, would we know why we were cold? Would our world truly be smaller in light of the endless universe beyond and all the other stars we see?
Like an ant or a bee beneath a microscope, our worlds are limited by our conception of them, and each of us inhabits a different one. The world I exist inside might be similar to yours, but they are not the same. I comprehend the world through the lenses of my own abilities, education, and experiences, and if I do not seek for new experiences, if I fail to ask you about yours, my world will always be limited.
The one bright point that separates us from the animal without rational thought is our tendency toward inquiry, which is not based on pigmentation or class system. We can expand the universe in which we live. We can add color and joy, we can deny hate and violence … we can acknowledge the unique and varied brilliance of a hundred thousand motes of light, each one of us more glorious than the last.
We are small and we are transient, like a dream in the night — full of meaning and desire, but gone in an instant. Make the most of what time you have and expand.
