In our fast-paced lives today, it is not very surprising how rarely we take time to reflect on matters other than school, relationships or future planning. Things that do not concern those are not of adequate importance for you to devote any of your, admittedly limited, life contemplating them. Prioritize, we mean. This tunnel-vision eliminates interference from outer less critical matters and allows us to focus on our goals. Indeed, perhaps we do reach them faster this way. But I can not help but wonder if it would not be of some advantage to every once in awhile take a look at ourselves from a bigger perspective than that. I believe the sight would amaze you.
Supposing that you are inside while reading this, imagine looking down at yourself from outside the window. Zoom out a couple of meters and your body becomes smaller in comparison to everything else you see. Back away further and the visible world consists of roofs, trees, streets and masses of people. The ”you”, by the window, who only moments ago occupied a big part of your total vision, is now nothing but one person among hundreds of others nearby. Go further up and the whole horizon is visible. The edge of the earth bends and it is becoming apparent that it is a globe – and rather small against the immense sky appearing above it. And yet even more miniscule are you – one pixel in a sea of others. Zoom out four-hundred-thousand times longer and you will see the earth from the distance of our moon. By now, even Sweden is only vaguely apparent, and much less Stockholm, or you.
You continue to back away further and further into space and put a ten million times longer distance between yourself and the earth. Your home-planet has now long ago disappeared out of sight. You have reached the nearest star. One of those that are formed when cosmic clouds of gas collapse in intrastellar nuclear reactions and, as they finally shatter, send out all their components across the galaxy. The elements that make up all planets, our earth and everything that lives there, including you. Created your senses. The twenty-six-thousand quintillion elements inside the photoreceptor cells in your eyes all come from those stars, and are with evolution organized in such a way that enables you to now see the wondrous world which you are a proud part of. It is peculiar, you are a way for the universe to explore itself, disguised. A former star, expressing itself as a human for a little while. Embrace it, feel it, know that you have been to all places of the earth, and all over the vast void of space. You are the child of a star, universal, and your components will go on traveling the universe for all time, making you eternal.