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?

photo credit: www.sci-news.com

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.

photo 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.

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

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Beauty From Above

I dream to travel the world. I am amazed by different cultures, different places, and how people can be different from each other. When I was younger, geography and history were my least favorites. They bored me a little. But now that I have come of age, I definitely appreciate maps, countries, travel, and culture. As of now, I neither have the time nor the means to see the world. So what I do is watch travel shows, refer to books or the website to see different places. I enjoy the shows House Hunters International, Vikings, The Tudors, anything that shows history, geography, culture.

To Travel is really awesome. If you have the time and money, it is such an experience to actually  be in different places, enjoying beautiful landscapes, exploring local food, feeling the place’s breeze, hearing fascinating languages being spoken, walking on the street pavements, and having your photograph with a beautiful scenery in the background. For now, I am happy and contented to travel the world using my sense of sight and my wild imagination! This is seeing life’s beauty up close.

Another perspective that truly astonish me is not just to witness the beauty of life in front of me. I often wonder how it also feels like to appreciate the beauty from above. I am very afraid of heights. For sure, I will never fly up in space or be an astronaut even in my imagination. This is the reason why I follow NASA’s official instagram account. I enjoy their photos of earth, outer space, Universe, and all those celestial objects. They let me have an experience of seeing the beauty of life from above. It is astounding to see wonders and beauty in space. It can be scary too because of the other unknown things out there. I will not be talking about force, gravity, or energy. I know little of these things. But in general, it is just so amazing. There are so many things we do not know yet. As human beings we strive and keep on learning, knowing, and discovering.

I believe the astronomers and astronauts are blessed to have a first hand knowledge and experience of knowing/seeing the beauty of/from space. I often wonder how this experience has changed their views or if it has affected them at all?  So as I was engaging in a conversation in Instagram, I came across an amateur astronaut. I seized the opportunity to ask my inquiries (I will update this article as soon as I get his response). I am excited to know his point of view. He said, “as an amateur astronomer, and one who works with both amateur and professional astronomers for the most part they share a humble understanding of their place in the Universe and are aghast and excited to know what’s out there.”

Down here, from this perspective, everything seems so big. Problems are big. Our country is big. It is a big wide world! But when I just imagine, from up there, we are tiny specs of dust. Being alive is truly amazing. Being here on earth for just a few years is an incredible gift. Compared to billions of years or light years in space. With this in mind, fighting/ war does not make sense.  No sense hurting people in any way. There is no sense to be unhappy. We are all brothers and sisters, we are all human beings. Whether we come from different places, we live differently, we look different, we are all the same. I hope I am making sense. Or am I just too drunk from awe?