Pillars of Existence
The Creation Complex: Life is crazy.
Have you ever heard of the Pillars of Creation? Google it — pretty neat stuff. Space is fascinating to me… mind-boggling would be a better term. It’s beautiful, mesmerizing, and full of history and data that’s just waiting to be breached and extrapolated by man’s undying curiosity. I guess I see it similarly to how I see the ocean, in that more than 80% of the ocean has been unmapped and unexplored(don’t @ me about this statistic; it’s a nicely-rounded estimate from NOAA). Today, we’re still finding a variety of species in the ocean that we’ve never seen before. Maybe that’s not so impressive to you, but I personally find that crazy — that we know so much yet so little.
Switching back to space, which is a bit bigger than the ocean… there’s a reason we use the phrase “spacing out” — because Space seems so out of reach. It functions beyond our little box called Earth. It’s out of our realm of comfort, literally. It encompasses millions and millions of lightyears, with each lightyear more beautiful and isolated than the last…full of unknowns much greater than Earth’s ocean depths. It seems that the further something is, or the harder to reach something is, the more fascinated we are to see it or reach it. I’d say it’s a reality check: we live in this relatively thin layer of what we know, sandwiched between two layers of vast unknowns, and we think we have it all figured out. As humans who seemingly dominate the living world, the great unknowns like the ocean and space put us in our place. They remind us that we still have a lot to learn, and not as entities that dominate but as subjects that reside [in a shared universe].
But it does prompt the question: How much more is there to discover?
1.)Is it even possible for us to truly know it all?
2.)If so, will Mother Earth even last that long? Or will she succumb to Father Time long before we’re able to unveil the mysteries that weave the universe together?
Who knows. One thing is sure — we aren’t going to stop in our pursuit regardless of the answers above.
curious eyes
magnify atoms of past:
Nebula begins.
When I first stumbled upon The Pillars of Creation, my mind flooded with questions and thoughts.
We were all created. (Hold on! I’m sure some people just cringed from that statement. Let me explain.)
We were all created: Whether we believe that source of creation is from a supreme being or from a spontaneous clash of atoms or plain luck of the draw, the bare truth is that we were all created from or by something or some combination of things. But I don’t want to go into that right now because that’s a whole different topic. I just want to highlight this idea of creation, and how we are created beings. As humans, we generally don’t like the idea of being called ‘created.’ We tend to associate it with the idea that we were allowed into existence by a supernatural being or entity “just because.” But I want to emphasize that *everything* in this universe was created, and everything in this universe creates.
cre·a·tion | \ krē-ˈā-shən : the act of making, inventing, or producing
From bacteria that aggregate together to create colonies to plants that humbly create oxygen to fuel all of life to small ants that gather in little assembly lines to create complex mounds…everything that has been created has some capacity to create. And when you look at mankind, you see the creation capacity at levels that can’t be compared to any other created. Our bar for creation is so high and involved, we have what I call a ‘creation complex’.
We were not naturally placed at the top of the hierarchy…let’s be real: we’re too fragile and physically lacking to have that luxury. But still, we created our way to the top. And how? Because it’s in our DNA to possess a strong sense of curiosity and the willingness to pursuit it. The capacity to create is directly related to the capacity to be curious, driven by the willingness to become even more curious. Humans don’t wonder about things, figure it out, and wipe their hands clean and call it done. We wonder about things, figure it out, and then wonder why we can’t do it even better. And eventually, we do it better (most times). Tell me that isn’t crazy. Other organisms do not possess this creation complex. They create to exist. We create to thrive.
It’s crucial that we stay curious. The moment we lose our sense of curiosity is the moment we stop progressing and improving. I’d go even further to say that it would be the moment we lose what makes us truly human. We need to ask questions — All of them. Especially the hard ones. Asking a question doesn’t mean you are stupid; it means you are curious enough to think for yourself, smart enough to not choose ignorance, and bold enough to improve yourself while challenging others.
Don’t believe everything you see, everything you hear, or everything you read. Don’t let ignorance and biases keep you from pursuing the unknown realms. Question your creation, and then question your existence. Sit down and try praying to God if you never tried it. Flip the coin and pick up a book on Evolution if you’ve never read one(S/O to a friend). Travel to other parts of the world and experience culture shock. Talk to people who practice different religions and really understand why they believe what they believe. You may not agree or even understand, but you should at least make the effort to learn why you don’t agree and understand. You owe your curiosity complex that much. Plus, it makes for better conversations at the dinner table.
As Leo Tolstoy once said beautifully, “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
We tend to find ourselves living in the shadow of comfort. If we have the audacity to go beyond the atmospheres that keep us here on Earth, then why not have the audacity to learn about the people that surround our immediate circle? It’s amusing to me that we’re bold enough to launch ourselves millions of miles into space when we can’t seem to muster up even an ounce of courage to ask a neighbor why they believe what they believe.
So, as a fellow created being with a crazy creation complex, let me ask this: What are the pillars that hold YOU up?
What drives YOUR created life?
How are you keeping your curiosity in check?
How comfortable are you right now?
wondering feet fly
past The Pillars of Creation:
Newly formed dust brews.
