There's an extremely specific feeling I experience about once a month.
Sometimes, when driving around or just out in the world under the big, blue sky—I feel small. Suddenly and out of nowhere.
There’s something about seeing the endless expanse of blue of a cloudless sky, stretching out forever until it kisses the horizon that just makes me feel tiny. It’ll hit me, and I’m suddenly aware of the scale of things. How the Earth is SO big that its curves are imperceivable to us on the ground. How we have to defy gravity to get a sense of that curve and the planet’s largeness. That there are millions of other people just beyond that imperceivable edge. How in the state I live in, it would take half a day to drive from its eastern side to the western side, and that already feels so big—and that somehow, the Earth is even bigger than that.
And beyond that blueness above us is the inky darkness of the rest of the universe, occasionally peppered by stars like our Sun and rocks like the one we’re standing on, also spinning and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. How that space is, truly, space; so much of it doesn’t have anything in it. And it stretches on, as far as we know, for infinity. And infinity is already a hard concept to tackle. Our brains are built in a way that we struggle to visualize big numbers, like the multiple zeroes of a billionaire’s bank account. All of it, suddenly and simultaneously, makes me feel impossibly small.
I think if other folks also experienced this feeling about once a month, we’d probably be better off as a species. Astronauts probably know what I mean.
I am not a paragon of goodness. I’ve been selfish before; most people have. But that smallness makes me feel two things: the importance of kindness and empathy and thoughtfulness… as well as painfully aware about how much we do on a global scale doesn’t matter. We could be hit by a meteor, swallowed by an earthquake, flooded out, ice-aged—vaporized by aliens from outer space, I don’t know. Why would I want my ‘leaders’ to waste so much time and energy on “othering” people to hurt them, when what I really care about is my well-being, and the well-being of my neighbor? That she and her children are fed, and are free to laugh and play and grow. That he has somewhere safe and warm to sleep at night. That they (singular! and plural!) are free to be whoever they want to be. And then that their neighbors are also fed/safe/happy/free. Other critters don’t seem to struggle with altruism and get by just fine without the concept of an “economy” or whatever.
Ultimately, we’re little blips in time and on Earth’s surface. If we raze her to the ground, the dirt will still be there orbiting the sun (but, hopefully, other plants and animals will take over and take care of her better than we did). The world can be terrible, but often the worst part is how we treat the world. So that sense of smallness is always a reminder to me to just be good to people, and to fight for that goodness if need be.
✦ The Overview Effect (required reading, I think)
✦ Why big numbers break our brains
✦ Altruism (biology)
✦ Valley of the Drums
Cheers,
Chey