A HELLUVA SPECK

 “YOU ARE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Well, not really, but you are the center of your universe.  The world you know is seen only through your eyes.  Words, images, and sounds are filtered through your consciousness and your heart…Ask yourself, what kind of world do you want for yourself, your family, and those you love, and then set out to create that world.”  (Excerpt from my book, Have I Told You Today That I Love You)

I have just finished reading a small but powerful little book (5x7” hardcover with 80 pages) titled, Seven Brief Lessons On Physics, by Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist.  Rovelli presents a very brief outline of the current state of knowledge in the major branches of modern physics: Einstein’s general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology and the architecture of the universe, elementary particle physics, quantum gravity, and heat and the probability of black holes.

It is a testament to the author’s writing that one is able to come away with the faintest sliver of understanding of these subjects.  I felt like I’d been allowed a very quick glance into a darkened room, enough to provide a vague impression of what I saw, but not enough to describe it to anyone else.  Because of the work of Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrass, and other scientists who have written for the lay-person, we are able to acquire enough knowledge to appreciate the indescribable vastness of the cosmos, in which our solar universe is but the tiniest speck. The Hubble telescope has revealed that our galaxy is one of over 100 million other galaxies with at least 10 trillion planetary systems in the known universe.  Earth is in one of those 10 trillion systems, and is home to almost 7 ½ billion men, women, and children.  To call us a speck in the universe would be a gross exaggeration.  We are more like a mini speck, or teensy weenie speck (maybe I should just stick with speck),

and the more we learn, the more we appreciate how much we do not know.

So I sit here, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible vastness that surrounds me, and I think to myself, it doesn’t make sense that tiny specks on another tiny speck in this universe have the capacity to imagine and learn as much as we do about our existence. Is nature playing a cruel joke on us? From a big bang at a time and distance far beyond anything we can imagine we have evolved (from nothing?) to a curious and intelligent speck.  And that wee little speck has the capacity to begin to understand the cosmos and its individual insignificance, which seems like a bad joke.  The more advanced we become, and the more we learn about the universe, the more we realize how unimportant we are in the grand scale of things.  On one hand I am grounded in the comfort and security of the self, and on the other I am shown how insignificant I really am. 

Perhaps life is like a single molecule that, along with untold others, creates an entity. We marry, have children, and create a family.  We interact with neighbors, and create a neighborhood.  Our neighborhood interacts with other neighborhoods to create a community.   Each entity reacts to be part of something larger, and everything works best when we learn how to keep one foot firmly grounded in our selves as individuals, and the other securely planted in the community, an attitude so elegantly described by Elizabeth O’Connor in her book, Journey inward, Journey Outward.

We may be a mere speck when it comes to exerting any influence on the universe, but we can hold our heads high because we are one hell of a speck.