Monday, July 23, 2012

Marble



A wiser man than I once described the heavenly body in the picture above far more eloquently & unequivocally than I could ever dream. Mind you, he never ascribed it to a heaven and most certainly did not call it a body. He merely spoke the truth about a dot, once upon a time. The picture his words captioned was taken from so much farther away & so, in kind, seems that much more impressive by its very token. If you wish to find that picture, then go do so. Comprehend what you see. That is not the point of this letter, though.

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, 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 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 this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. 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. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 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 with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-Carl Sagan

You, admittedly, have no idea who Carl Sagan is, was or will eventually become. I would challenge you to find out each of those outcomes. Make haste in that endeavor. Good luck with the latter of the three as that has yet to be determined... but I have Hope. ;)

I don't want you to wish on shooting stars. I want you to know what meteors are.

There's greater magic to be found there.

Oh, by the way. This is the the marble he was talking about.

See it yet? Do you see You yet?