Tears
Today, I had a strange experience at the gym. As I was walking on the treadmill, getting through my necessary, but not very exciting cardio workout prescribed by my trainer, I was watching TED talks to distract myself from the mundane nature of the exercise and I chose one of Brian Cox's presentations, because he is one of my heroes, unbeknown to me that his words will make me weep in the middle of the gymnasium.
They were not his words, to be precise, but a quote from one of his heroes, Carl Sagan.
On 14 February 1990, as the Voyager 1 space probe was rushing through the empty space of the solar system at 38,210 miles per hour, passing all the planets, Carl Sagan had an idea. At 3.7 billion miles away from planet Earth the probe turned its camera around to look back at all the celestial bodies it passed and took a final photo. In this image, Earth, our planet, our home appeared as a pale blue dot in the vastness of space. On seeing the photograph, the astronomer, whose name is often mentioned as the father of the Voyager Golden Record - though it was produced by Timothy Ferris -, said this:
"We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 spilt by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatred. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, and 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. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
I was listening to Brian Fox reciting these famous words, and to my surprise, tears were running down my face. Perhaps, I was just too tired from hours of intense training and my brain was reacting in this way; it happened before when I did not get enough sleep and felt overly emotional all the time the next day. I do not know for sure, but one thing I know. I am fascinated and enchanted by science and nature. The complexity of it and the fact that it works without any 'intelligent' intervention. Let's be honest, it works best when 'intelligent' creatures (i.e. humans) do not interfere much.
Whilst the complexity of the immune system, the infinity of the universe, the mystery of the quantum world, and the list goes on, overwhelm people, they make me wonder with awe. Our insignificance does not paralyse me but inspires me to be the best version of myself, to be kind and to care.
Thank you Carl Sagan for the Pale Blue Dot and thank you Brian Cox for reminding me of it.
