The universe is so huge and intimidating -- and I'm so tiny.
Two exercises:
Stand outside and think and look and open yourself up. Look to the horizons and try to get an actual feel for how big the Earth is. Feel the slow curve of it -- the vastness of it. Add in the pictures that you know of it, mix this up with your feel for distances and extrapolate out until you feel how big this planet is. Then find the speck that is you.
Look at a stranger. Realize as you look at this stranger that s/he has a life that is every bit as detailed and complex as your own. Think and project until you can completely grasp that this person is, like you, a complete and discrete personality with a life and a consciousness that is entirely her/his own, and that s/he lives this existence 24 hours a day, seven days a week for an entire lifetime. Then look at someone else and do it again. And again. And again. Then think of how many people there are in this world and realize -- do everything that you can to grasp -- that they all have complete and detailed lives that they are all living right now.
Life is such an astounding thing.
There is so much of life that is incomprehensible, and we must all, in our own ways, come to terms with that. We are so complex and so improbable, yet we are also tiny and insignificant. Some ascribe our existence to a superior entity of some sort that brought us and all that is around us into being. Some ascribe it to chance and science -- that somehow the universe came to be and that the stuff of the universe combined into the stuff of life and started the chain that led to us. Some do not choose an answer, whether because they don't know or they just don't care -- whether actively or passively -- they don't decide.
But ultimately this shouldn't matter. We are. We exist, all of us, right now. The questions of why and how really don't matter that much. No matter why or how, we are. We have found ourselves in this thing called life on this place called the Earth surrounded by billions of other lives. The only thing that should matter is how we live.
We need a new way to define people. We need to stop defining each other based on how each of us chooses to deal with the mysteries of life, and start defining each other by how we each live. Those of us who understand and appreciate the importance of being good and kind and caring people need to reach out to each other, regardless of everything else, simply because the only thing that we all share is that we are all here right now. We have all been thrown into this life, and we are all important in our own eyes. Clearly the most important thing in life is to recognize that spark that is within us each and all and protect and nurture it in ourselves and at least not harm it in others. Any who would harm us are our enemies, regardless of how they choose to deal with the mysteries. I am not the enemy of either theists or atheists, I am the enemy of those who would live poor and hurtful lives. No matter what they may believe. And I am friend to any who would try to live with kindness and respect and honesty. No matter what they may believe.
And yes, this is an enormous steaming pile of self-congratulatory idealism. But it's what I feel and that's what this thread is supposed to be about anyway.
-BLT |
