The world is a frustratingly fascinating place. How many problems can one little rock in space have? To put things in perspective, the Earth is 7,917 miles in diameter. The Sun is 865,373 miles in diameter. The Sun is a SMALL star. As in most stars are BIGGER. And most planets that we know of in the galaxy are bigger than Earth, and some bigger than even Jupiter (86,881 miles in diameter). And if you go just past Jupiter (which isn’t even halfway to leaving the solar system) and look back, it will be difficult to find the Earth. It is a tiny little speck, just like the image on this post (look at the beam farthest to the right and look for a tiny dot). Look up a video right now; there are a ton of versions but just about any will do. Look up “Pale Blue Dot Carl Sagan.” Regardless of political or religious views, it is quite eye-opening. We are literally on a tiny blue dot that isn’t visible from more than a few hundred million miles away (leave the solar system and you won’t see it).
Yet here we are, bickering and arguing, laughing and loving, and just living life. We are born, and not long thereafter, we grow up and go to college and get jobs and get married and have kids. Pretty soon we are counting grandchildren and the days to retirement, and shortly after that we are on our way out. In less than 100 years (which in the Universe might as well be no time at all) we have lived the entirety of the human experience. Every step of the way is hard, to us at least. We face decisions and choices that seem to have no right answer. There are things to be done and people to take care of and issues to resolve. There seems to be no time at all, and we forget so much of what is important.
One of my favorite philosophies in life is the idea that we should enjoy the journey. It is also the one I least follow. I am always counting the time till I can take the next step, whether that be in the next day or next week or next year. I can, at almost any time of the year, tell you how many days there are till Christmas. All of this counting and waiting and anticipating actually isn’t good though. What about that person who I pass every day on my way to school? I don’t know their name, where they are from, or what they aspire to be when they get out of school. Yet I pass them every single day. Why don’t I take the time to get to know them? I have a million excuses, from “I have class to get to” to “that would be so embarrassing!” But all the excuses add up to nothing. There is that language I always set the goal to learn (Russian), why don’t I put in the time and commitment? Another million excuses come to mind, but they amount to nothing.
This may seem like rambling, but I feel that just about everybody has the same issue. We all want to be more than we are, but we get so absorbed in trying to be that person who we so desire to be that we miss the actual opportunities to be that person. We miss the whole journey, and we make it to the end, and realize that the reward was along the path, not at the end. It was in getting to know that person, or struggling to learn that language, or doing whatever our little goals may be.
So the world is frustratingly fascinating. We do so much, only to realize we missed the truly important. But in the end of our lives, when we realize that, briefly, and only ever so briefly, we suddenly become that person we always wanted to be. Once we do, our time here is done. We did what we needed to do, which was learn that one lesson, whatever it may be. And we are gone.
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