It’s night and the thunderstorm outside is pushing me to write something. I don’t have anything specific to write but it seems like the outside thunderstorm is conspiring with the inside thunderstorm to force me into writing something as I haven’t written something for my blog for a long time. So beware, I myself don’t know what this piece will turn out to be.
This purple-blue midnight weather for some reason fascinates me. It has an element of scare and fright as the violent winds keep thrashing things. The doors in the hallway keep slamming, and every now and then a sudden thrash of lightning will just make me marvel at the insignificance of the things I deem significant and the significance of things I deem insignificant.
Perception is what defines my experience. (A heavy rain has just started) The lens through which I see the world has been the same since always, and it’s the way I have become acquainted with. Yet, there is a different perspective, a different reality that is way bigger than myself. The universe started some billion years ago, and in this huge universe, I live on a pale blue dot that amounts to nothing when it comes to the huge universe in which there are thousands (or millions?) of superclusters in which there are a lot lots of galaxies in which there are lot lots of stars, some of which have planets revolving around them and, the pale blue dot on which I live is just a planet like that. On this pale blue dot, there exists a unique phenomenon that is not observed anywhere in its close nearby, and this unique phenomenon is called life. Of creatures that exhibit this phenomenon called life, there exist millions of different species or kinds, all peculiar and unique. One among these species, which considers itself as the dominant species of this pale blue dot (full disclosure: I am a member of it) has named it “Earth” (in one of the many languages they speak).
Members of this presupposed dominant species, called humans, have been living on this planet for thousands of years, while each one of them has an average lifespan of just 80 years. It is assumed that around 100,000,000,000 humans have ever lived on this planet. I am just an insignificant 1 among them, who live on that insignificant planet in that insignificant galaxy in that insignificant supercluster in that (maybe) significant universe. At once, I know that I am not magnificent at all, despite my “self” trying to prove that to me. Of this magnificent story that has been at play since the inception of this universe, I make an extremely minuscule part – a side role. The ridiculous nature of all the fantasies I have built around this notion of my self becomes self-evident.
Now, there’s also a flip side of the picture. Despite the extremely humble magnitude of my existence, I still exist and I consciously know that I exist. The probability of my existence is almost equal to zero, yet it turned out not to be zero. This difference between zero and almost zero is the game-changer, the revolutionizer. This notion when combined with the acceptance of the obvious insignificance of my existence opens up another dimension of consciousness that exceeds beyond my “self” into something bigger, something much more significant. What’s that something much more significant? I have yet to find it.
