A Bigger Picture
“The universe is thick with stars as is the Earth with sentient beings, all attempting to survive and expand their species, moving from place to place, gathering and devouring, creating and destroying.”
We are all small in comparison to the world and the universe that surrounds us. We are in fact a minuscule part to nature, despite our egos, yet this is where we came from, what we are made of: the stars, the sun and the moon. Clearly we are a part of a vast powerful energy, a circular pattern of rotations, cycles of seasons, life and death. Where we’ve come from is where we return to, where we are is our given home, our families and foes, responsibility and dependence: full of wonder and curious discoveries of beauty and the ugly.
The universe is thick with stars as is the Earth with sentient beings, all attempting to survive and expand their species, moving from place to place, gathering and devouring, creating and destroying. Each has their own particular way of being, our own way of doing, an inner compass of living between birth and death. We are not particularly aware of each other and the Earth would not cry if our species died out, but here we are, interwoven, each a part of the circle of life, pulled by the moon and warmed by the sun.
“Indeed we are a small part, but what the parts are, seems to be our destiny to find.”
We have created stories of the moon and chanted to the gods of the black night, ran from the wrath of thunder and succumbed to the blue-black seas. We’ve named our children after gods and the stars after our children, still wondering and fearing, going deeper into the waters and further out to the black holes of space and time. Never are we satisfied in our knowing, nor tire of our running, our need to survive and expand, controlling the uncontrollable, pacifying our ignorance and swallowing our fears. We’ve conquered the moon but not our selves, still repeating history and correcting our wrong doings. Indeed we are a small part, but what the parts are, seems to be our destiny to find.
We have toiled this planet for centuries, buried and dug up our stories of who we think we are, while still searching for the why of our existence. We’ve created icons, built statues and torn them down, all for the sake of identity and finding ourselves, searching amongst the stars, roaming our original history. To say that we are lost is a misconception, who we are is not limited to our selves, we are part of a bigger picture, of a shared identity: deep as the waters and the blackness of stars we spin within. One cannot be lost, if the purpose is to seek and to learn.
Time will only tell how deep and far we go, what we find and most importantly what we learn. We are specks amongst stars, with the same energy to burn, pulling us forward, pushing us to the brink. We are seekers and finders, but like stars we burn out, leaving the task for the newest to come, the newest to seek: light within the darkness, spinning as the world too, spins.
“Against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.”
Rachel Carson
