(image via nasa.gov)
I realized something super terrific in the past…Recent.
A lot of people I know often feel insignificant or generally “small” in terms of their confidence or worth.
When I was in 11th grade, I had this physics teacher. Mr. Vore. He was a great teacher, and he literally taught his class how the universe worked. One day, we got into this tangent about how vast outer space was.
I admit, I always knew it was, y’know, BIG. Sure it was, it’s space. But I had no idea the magnitude of it and I STILL don’t. It’s unfathomable. It’s impossible to understand. It is way too much for the brain to really comprehend in full.
I mean, the basic idea is this: It takes you 6 hours to get from Las Vegas to San Diego. That’s one fourth of an entire day. And the states are NEIGHBORS. Now imagine driving, strictly driving, all the way to the other side of the earth. Okay, so Las Vegas to…We’ll say somewhere in Russia. That’s about 5000 miles, give or take. If you’re driving at 50 miles an hour the whole way, that is 100 hours. About four days.
From here to the moon? About 238,857 miles. Driving that would take you 200 days. That’s almost a year, from here to the moon! And you can SEE the moon from where you’re standing, it’s right there! It’s relatively near to us.
The closest galaxy to us, if you count even the tiny ones, would be Canis Major Dwarf. That’s 25,000 light years away from us.
(image via the-neffs.com)
That is over a trillion miles. To be precise, about 146,962,495,000,000,000,000-ish miles.
I am not calculating driving distance for that. I’ll let you wrap your head around it.
Now if you want to talk about distance in terms of “real” galaxies, like ours, then we’ll talk Andromeda.
Bear with me. I know you didn’t sign up for a physics or math lesson, but this’ll get awesome, I promise.
From here to Andromeda is, get this, 2,560,000 LIGHT YEARS away. Which is…
15,048,959,500,000,000,000 miles. Okay. I’ll calculate that one.
That’s 12,540,799,600,000,000 days. Which is over a million years.
And, keep in mind, this is the CLOSEST ONE to us.
The closest galaxy. Out of God knows how many. What about the 4th closest? How long would that take?
Imagine WALKING that!
So with all things considered, nobody in the entire world knows how long it would take for somebody to touch the edge of the universe; especially considering it’s expanding still. It’s Brobdignagianly huge and it’s still continuing to grow. That is like, infinity years, pretty much.
So here’s the thing.
Now that you have an idea, or maybe don’t, of how gigantic the universe is, I want you all to consider this.
You’re a part of that. You feel me? You are a part of that which is unfathomably brilliant, beautiful, complex, and unbelievable. You ARE the universe. You don’t live in some little area completely separate from the universe, you don’t watch the universe scroll by you as you exist, no, you ARE that very thing which is the great big everything.
However many years ago, in one very specific spot in the incomparably ginorfous universe, there was a group of millions of microscopic cells. All of them happily swimming with their little white tails. Suddenly, they saw something big and looking comfortable. They all started swimming, all millions of them, towards this magical thing. And out of all of them, YOU were the one who managed to get yourself in there. YOU.
And this million-man race occurred in a place that occurred in a city that occurred in a state or country in a continent in a planet in a galaxy among infinite other galaxies.
Can…Can you even really put that in your head? Personally, mine hurts from it, but it’s a very endearing hurt.
So that occurrence of conception that gave you the ability to live happened in this comparatively microscopic spot in the universe. Now, don’t take that to mean you’re insignificant compared to the rest of outer space, because remember what I said: That is you. You’re not tiny compared to the universe because you are the universe.
The universe is within you and outside of you. You don’t live outside of it, you live IN it, it’s a PART of you. The light from the sun is a part of your life. That light came from a bunch of elements from the universe coming from the edges of the edges of infinite abyss and colliding together. That light is what gave the plants on Earth the power to grow, and then a bunch of animals ate those plants and evolved into your ancestors, which ate more of the plants and other animals that ate the plants, and eventually they had your parents which ate the green light-eaters, and that all led to the production of the microscopic spermy wormy and the eggy weggy… that led to YOU. See what I mean?
You are a PART of INFINITY.
-Ahem.- That having been said, how does it feel knowing that you, Mr. and Mrs. AwesomeSauce, are part of something that nobody can comprehend? You’re part of something that even the great and beautiful human mind isn’t fully capable of understanding? Not even a part of; that you ARE the universe?
Boy, I wish I could put it into words better than how I did, but it’s really difficult to understand, let alone write about. Sorry about that! I hope it at least somewhat got through to you.
Try feeling small now, folks. In reality, nothing is bigger and more incredible than you.
Love!
-XITVII
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