Friday, February 08, 2008

Us..the insignificant!

Last week, I happened to step out onto the terrace of my house. I was out there for no particular reason, just mulling over the happenings of the last few months. These issues or circumstances I placed myself in, were beginning to overwhelm me. I was getting to be cranky, irritable and a pain in the wrong places. Well, I was blaming myself, the world, the whole works. Downright depressed! On the terrace, moping around, I glanced up and saw that humbling sight. The darkness, the emptiness of deep space, the enormity of the skies. Thats when it hit me..BANG! woah, my self inflicted worries just disappeared. In the vastness of the universe, my worries were worth absolutely nothing. None of this matters. I don't matter, you don't matter, what I do doesn't matter. Our petty lives, our daily businesses, the wars we wage, it all seems so insignificant in the greater scheme of things. In the cosmic sense we could be an anomaly! A blip, heck not even a blip on the universal radar! Carl Sagan puts everything in perspective when he says "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people". By all means we should be doing all those brilliant things us humans have done for thousands of years. However, its ridiculous that we say we are the greatest, most intellectual beings around. We have not even crossed the boundaries of our solar system let alone traverse the universe. You see, the universe has need not be in accordance with human ambition. We have proclaimed ourselves as the highest limit of evolution, yet with all our supposed brilliance we cannot save a dying planet. In fact we are pushing it further towards the brink, fully knowing this is the only, ONLY, home we have! Yes, arent we all smart and superior! Ego's running riot. One look at our true position in the cosmic world would set us straight. Peering into the night sky that evening among the overwhelming sense of insignificance, I felt, strangely, reassured. My worries didnt matter at all. Who cares!!.. the universe would still be the universe. Staring back at me, putting me in my place, empty but full, silent but screaming. I was refreshed!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

proving tht ur nothin amongst this humongous universe isn't an excuse from getting away from your worries nor is it a reason to get rid of responsibilities...jus because we r nothin n the ppl around are nothin will u stop helpin a dying life, or will u stop feeding tht cute cat at home?..u dont rite? so we r wht we r rite now n we strive for the better .....the ant doesnt care how small it is! but it continues to build a home n store food and it doesnt complain, in doing it, that a light rain mite wash away its home n food in mins n turns it into "nothingness" !!!

sid said...

true..all true..but what if the ant thinks he is the greatest thing out just coz he hasnt looked up n seen the world..its a question of ego's.remove your ego n watch expectations n anxiety dissappear..we feel we are great, we can do this n that etc etc..but does that help us in anyway..i mean look at us destroying the world..destroying each other..if we just take some time out to look away from our petty differences n opinions we could infact do even more wonderous things..

Aparna said...

"If a man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos,he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself,should he bother to write a great symphony or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?"- Stanley Kubrick.
..could be quite the prologue for this article if ever made into a book. the quote absolutely reminded me of it. nice blog.

:)