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Scope of the Cosmos

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The time scale of billions of years is as unfamiliar to us as human beings as the time scale of months is to a mayfly.  How strange would it be for the mayfly to assert that the universe and everything in it was only a week old?  Or that the entire universe exists solely for those precious minutes, or hours of their existence.  Mankind is such a tiny speck in the scope of space and time.  The scope of how small we are compared to the entirety of the universe is staggering.  Even more staggering is the short amount of time we have existed in the scope of time, and how long after we are gone this universe will continue on.

We are here, on this planet, so insignificant and small;  Tucked away in our little corner of this galaxy which joins the ranks of the billions and billions of galaxies outside of our own.  How many other organisms throughout the universe have risen to the same apex and fallen before our planet even existed?  How many other organisms throughout the universe will rise and fall in the future?  To think that we alone are the single greatest achievement of the universe, and we are the entire reason for the existence of it in the first place is not simply arrogant, but I would assert that there is no greater form of narcissism.

We are to the universe as a grain of sand is to this planet.  I find that breathtaking.

To those who would say that this depletes the value of people, I would disagree with that.  I would instead say that rather than depleting the "value" of people, this depletes the ego of people.  People want to think that they are so important to this world and to this universe for some reason.  They want to feel big and important which is simply insecurity and ego.  The purpose of your life is subjective to each individual person.  There is no grand unifying purpose for humans.  "If the universe was not made for me and I'm just this little speck and so insignificant, why am I even here? what is the purpose of me even being alive?"  Well now you've stumbled onto the first step of the tall climb to knowledge and finding the purpose of your own life.  You've popped the ego bubble you've been living in.  You are finite, and one day the ride will be over.  You will never be here again.  Bask in that fact and take it to heart.  Contemplate it's every meaning and consequence.  Constantly expand your understanding.  Pass on your knowledge in the hopes that maybe your descendants can achieve knowledge that you did not have the time to attain.  And maybe that knowledge will give them purpose.  The meaning of life is not a simple statement, or paragraph, or verse.  So for me, what is my purpose in this vast universe?  I'm still working on it.

-Michael Freeman

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