The Universe is Too Big

Did you know that we don't matter?

Maybe you're the kind of optimist that thinks everyone is significant to the world's cycle of events. Maybe I've offended you deeply by telling you that you're unimportant. And I don't mean to make your existence feel pointless, but it kind of is.

Here's the thing: the universe is too big. We all live in a city that lives in a state that lives in a country that lives in a continent that lives on a planet. We live on a singular planet among a collection of other planets. This collection of planets live in a galaxy, a galaxy that lives with an abundance of other galaxies. These galaxies form a universe, a universe that is much, much too big.

This is either a good thing or a bad thing. It goes one of two ways:

1. The massiveness of everything inspires you. You look into the night sky and want to become the stars. You learn about the universe and want to discover it; you want to explore it. You want to be the kind of person who makes an impact on everything else. You want to matter.

2. The vast, immense pile of giant stars is terrifying. You glance upward toward the clouds and feel really really small. All you see is a huge, empty space between where you are and where you wish you could be. You want to float into the sky and touch the galaxies, but you're accompanied with the heavy reality that you can't.

There's this picture taken by the Voyager 1 in 1990. It's of the Earth – our Earth – from 6 billion kilometers away. The picture is called the Pale Blue Dot. And it shows, visually, just how minuscule our entire world actually is. We live on a speck.

Image Courtesy of: Pale Blue Dot

Though the whole "we don't matter" concept isn't exactly inspirational, it's nice (and necessary) to regain a sense of perspective.

Have you ever seen Horton Hears a Who? (It's my favorite childhood movie, by the way). If you haven't experienced it, I'll enlighten you:

This is an absurd animation written by Dr. Seuss and some other guy name Jeff. It's about Horton, an elephant, who lives in the jungle with all his jungle friends. One day he comes across this little crumb on a flower and manages to discover that there is, in fact, a little city of people living on this speck.

At the end of the movie, the camera "zooms out" to reveal that Horton and all his jungle pals are ALSO living on a speck. Despite the fact that I was only 8 years old when I first saw this film, it caused me to consider the idea: what if we, too, live on a speck? And the reality is that, when you think about it, we do. We live on a speck. Sure, the world is gigantic in comparison to an ant or a caterpillar. But in comparison to the universe, our world is nothing but a speck. A pale blue dot suspended between the stars.

Whether this matters to you or whether it doesn't, it's certainly something to think about. I used to believe that we, as humans, were too small. I thought that we were too insignificant, stuck here on this tiny planet. In actuality, the universe is just too big. No human is ever going to explore the entire macrocosm, and that's a fairly unsettling realization. The universe is too big. You cannot reach up and touch a star. If everything were a bit smaller and a bit less infinite, then maybe – just maybe – you'd matter a little more.