Home » astronomy » What Every Human Should Remember

What Every Human Should Remember

My alone time. My quiet time. So precious. I have more or less an hour. Done with the morning routine. Sent off hubby to work. Sent off my dear son to school. The little girl is taking her morning nap.

I have never ending chores just like any typical stay at home mother. But I told myself, today I will do my best to take it easy. Chores will always be there!  So this one hour (or one and a half hour) is very precious to me. This is my prayer time. My blog time. My treadmill time. Sometimes chores time when they can not wait. I debated if I should run on the treadmill just like what I do whenever I get a chance. But the mind and the words are stronger. They just want to be out here.

This morning I had some news from home. And I had some reflections.

What should I pick? Image of crocodiles or some predators in the wild?

image_2203e-Nile-crocodiles

photo credit: www.sci-news.com

gray-wolves-black-coat-520

photo credit:www.care2.com

To be clear, these are just images in my head. I mean no harm. No offense. These pictures are part of nature. Maybe part of human nature as well. And that is the reality.

They are watching, observing from afar.  It is a waiting game. Some are moving closer. Discretely. Slowly and quietly.  Some are sniffing and fishing around. Waiting for the perfect time to get what they want.

article-0-15128387000005DC-329_970x572photo credit:www.dailymail.co.uk

Can this really be part of human nature? Can people just be assertive protecting what they think belongs to them? Will it be possible that sometimes people just want to acquire more? Power, assets, money, properties. All these worldly matters that matter so much? For me it is alright as long as no one gets hurt or harmed in any way. As long as these things are never the source of disagreements, hate, or divisions.

This part of life makes makes me feel a little sad. The important things that matter so much to a human being. Suddenly I thought of the pale blue dot by Carl Sagan.

Screen-Shot-2014-08-19-at-4.29.37-PM-1024x554

Photo credit: www.patheos.com

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

PLEASE VIEW THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO

4 thoughts on “What Every Human Should Remember

  1. Khristine,
    Excellent and thought provoking.
    It seems the more we supposedly progress the more we regress. We are not to far from the animal kingdom that is governed by instinct alone. Chaos born of relativism will do that.
    That blue dot in the sky just so happens to be in the middle of the universe determined by data gathered by space probes of the last 5 years. You are right in saying we are significant. Not simply because of scientific evidence that has been quite hushed(see my post-Food For Thought), but of most importance a cross that once was raised on a hill called Calvary.
    -Alan

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment