An Upward Glance

On cloudless nights, the tiny planet we call Earth is exposed to an uncountable number of stars, each speck of light much different then it seems. Look, a bright star is flickering. That insignificant spark in the sky is really a colossal, turbulent ball of scorching hot, ever-burning gas.

How close is it? Is it still alive?

How would it look if we were nearer, floating near this chemically charged monstrosity in the unfathomable black vacuum of space?

What if this fireball has become a gigantic nebula; an overwhelmingly beautiful cloud of the proud star’s remains? What generation, if any, will witness its beautiful destruction as delayed over a seemingly incalculable distance?

No living being can ever comprehend how staggeringly large the universe really is.

Everything in the universe, as far as we know, is made of atoms. Anywhere from 2 to 5 to whatever number of atoms makes up a molecule. Thousands of molecules make a cell, the first identifiably living thing. Trillions of cells make up just your body.

Your house is one of thousands in your town. Your town is just one of hundreds in your state. Your state is a small percentage of your country, which is part of a seemingly gargantuan amount of land.

However, only a small part of the earth’s 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000 tons is made of up this land, and then rest is all water. There are 9 (known) of these incredible planets, most much bigger than the Earth, and an extremely large amount of large space in between them, in orbit around a HUGE sun. 1,000,000+ Earths could fit inside it!

These unimaginably large solar systems are found billions of times over in a single galaxy, light years across. Light, which can lap the earth 19 times in a single second, takes hundreds of years to simply cross just
one
of these galaxies. Hundreds of galaxies can make up a cluster, thousands of which can make a super cluster, and billions of super clusters with exponentially more free space in between them make up what could be the tiniest fraction of the universe.

Imagine yourself floating, impossibly small in relation to this infinitely massive vacuum. There is a deafening silence in the surreality of space, and there is no line between dreams and reality.

There is no difference.

Even your focused eyes and mind cannot possibly even begin to understand the depth of what lies in absolutely every direction.

There is no direction.

How insignificant you must feel, surrounding by an immeasurably large amount of nothingness! And yet, in this nothingness you come to realize that there is nothing but you – all the rest is too distant to exist in your thoughts. It may not exist at all. You are the universe, and the master of its contents. But how can that be? How could such a miniscule creature with narrow knowledge of such a tremendous entity be its owner? It’s because
everything
in the universe; in your galaxy; on your planet; in your country; in your house, on, inside and around your body; is made of atoms. Atoms, the simplest thing in the entire universe, combine in simple ways to create the most intricate things in the entire universe. All things are made of the same atoms.

The same
exact
thing.

You are, in the purest way, the entire universe.

You are the very concept of existence.

The universe, the galaxies, the solar systems and planets, the stars they orbit, the life the planets contain, the places the life is, the life itself…

It is all the same.

The stars are lovely tonight, don’t you think?