H,
There is often this grain of
thought in popular culture about the tiny nature of the human experience compared
to the vastness of the universe. The tale is spun that we do not really matter,
our efforts are all dust and we will simple be forgotten by time and space when
we become extinct as a race. I admit I like this line. It suits my nihilistic
ideas about the nature of being. It had a nice ring to it when I was much
younger but I am not sure this was because of some scientific enthusiasm for
the vastness of outer space.
My aims were still very
close to earth and my particular patch of it. I felt if nothing mattered
because our time on earth was a grain of sand on an endless beach then nothing I
did truly mattered. I was trying to be free of guilt, of anger, of disappointment
and of the fear of giving account for the stewardship of a life I barely
understood. I was afraid of engaging life so the idea of being the third planet
to the left in one solar system of many more unknown meant that it did not
matter what I did. It was all an abyss, anyway.
Of course this is a silly
way to look at life. It is almost as silly as saying everything I do is of such
extreme importance that I will shake the fabric of time itself by picking the
red pill over the blue pill. There is a place where everything matters but it
is not in my head or in my inflated or deflated opinions about myself.
If we are eternal beings, if
we live in the light of some cosmic wisdom from the steady hand of a creator
and if we fall into line with the wide view of love then everything we do
matters in a more introspective way than we imagine. There are more depths in
the human soul fathomable than in the Universe unfathomable and, as yet,
unreachable. We cannot avoid the imperative of being a full human being for the
speculative fiction of the universe uncharted. I did this a lot as a child.
Growing up needs a deeper
look at what it means to matter.