have y’all seen that nasa pic of the earth with the sun behind it on the night time side it really really fucked me up my own soul became solid and like………….. weeped!
who wouldn’t see this and then look deeply into their own emotional playing field to see what improvements could be made purely inspired by the vulnerable earth. this is the face of all literal gods
That ball of shiny blue Houses everybody anybody ever knew -Chris Hadfield, “I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)”
bear with me for a moment while I wax poetic here—
The thing that consistently fucks me up about studying astronomy is just how vast and expansive the universe is. It’s not infinite— which itself can be hard to wrap my head around sometimes— but it is so much bigger than we can easily comprehend. There is so much out there, so many galaxies and so, so many stars that we will never be able to touch, moving away from us so fast that we can never catch up to them.
In all of this, there are plenty of pockets where life could exist; by some estimations, almost half of all stars will have some planets, and of these, a decent fraction will be habitable (by Earth-lifeform standards). While the process of how a habitable planet develops life is a mystery and may well always be, even so— the universe should be teeming with life.
And yet, for all that we have looked, we have found none besides ourselves. On the scale of everything that has ever existed, a scale so large it gives infinity a run for its money, our Earth contains the only living things we have found, and we the only intelligent life. Yes, there is some evidence for life elsewhere, but no definitive proof yet— we are all we can count on. We are a statistical anomaly: one world is so insignificant in the vastness of the universe that a godly researcher surveying the whole universe as we currently know it to be— lifeless save for ourselves— would be well within their rights to write us off as an outlier.
But we exist.
Insignificant though we may be, we exist, and that makes all the difference. We are the proof of life in the darkness; we are a living testament to the fact that life can exist in a seemingly lifeless universe. Some look at our aloneness in the universe as evidence that our existence is meaningless— I’d argue that this is part of what gives our existence meaning.
I have always been of the mind that everyone on this earth matters, that just to exist is enough. It does not matter whether you go on to be remembered for your works, or your name is one of so many that fade from memory after a mere generation or two. If you live your life with the intent of bringing happiness to yourself and to those around you— even if you strive for happiness and never achieve it— this is enough. This is all that can be expected of you. The fact that you exist is a gift from the universe itself, and like any gift worth receiving, it is given without conditions. All you must do is be the proof of life in the darkness.
You’re already doing great. Keep going.
