My view is vast. Infinite. It’s the entire cosmos, all the solar systems, galaxies, stars, planets, asteroids, satellites and black holes.

Time is irrelevant here, but change is constant. Stars flicker out or explode as supernovas. Dark matter and energy pulse and there are hefty rocks careening through space, colliding with planets and other celestial objects. Planets circle stars and moons circle planets. There is chaos and there is order. The universe is All.

I rest my sights on the Milky Way which is but one of billions of galaxies in the universe. Each star in the milky way is teeming with planets. I focus on one of those stars, known as the Sun and see the nine planets that orbit it. Looking even closer I note the third planet from the sun, a blue dot in the black vastness. Zooming in I see that the planet is mostly covered in water, hence the blue tinge but great mountain ranges zig zag across the land and there’s lush vegetation, trees being the most notable feature. 

Drawing my gaze even closer I recall that this blue dot in the universe is also home to billions of beings, from single cell organisms to birds that soar and larger two and four-legged creatures. Last time I cast a glance this way there were significantly more varieties but now the two-legged ones, the humans, have grown in number, skewing the fine balance. Time will sort out this problem. Time, eternal time, restores balance to all aspects of the cosmos.

Earth has existed for 3.8 billion years but humans have been around for only a few hundred thousand. In other words, they just got there.

And perhaps they are already on their way out?

I’d watched the evolution of life on this planet and when I first noticed the transition from hominid to human I was curious. What will they do with their developing brains? With their compassionate hearts? 

Not what I’d expected, as it turns out.

Earth, that tiny, fragile exception in this particular solar system was an anomaly. It had life. It had potential. Humans did not rely solely on instinct to guide them as unicellular beings do. They are capable of great emotion and wondrous imagination. Continue reading →