Good Afternoon SuperForest!
It’s one of those blustery, grey early Autumn Mondays where I am – you know the type: where Summer seems like an age ago and the rain blows sideways and tries to steal your hat, where you’re hunched down and your shoelaces got wet in a puddle and maybe your tummy hurts… In short, one of those days where despite your best intentions it can be easy to conclude that staying under the duvet might have been nicer…
One of those days where maybe you want to revisit this:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam …
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
This is part of a speech that the astronomer, author and much more, Carl Sagan made, based on a photograph that he persuaded NASA to use the Voyager 1 spacecraft to take from a distance of 4 billion miles back in 1990. It can be a bit …daunting? to consider how tiny we are in the vastness of space, but I think Mr Sagan had it right: how truly extraordinary our home is, how especially special each and every one of you are.
A little perspective, a little kindness and maybe a hot chocolate and a browse around SuperForest and you start to sunny-side yourself up again! (and just as I typed this, the sun shone its shiny face from behind the clouds and filled the room. Hee)
Thank you Carl Sagan, Thank you NASA, and Thank You SuperForest!
You’re so awesome you never fail to make my milk chocolatey
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