Star light, star bright..

An experience you would've had at some point in your life : Its night, late night... You're walking alone, tensed, worried about next weeks assignment, or perhaps next month's report. Having no clue on what to do, you look up at the sky. Its night, theres not much sound or light within much distance, and you look up and see something like the one on the left.

And then you just realize : Man, the Universe is much bigger than I thought. So.. why worry ?

Well, maybe not the exact one, but all of us have felt this wave of relief on looking at the sky at some point. Star-gazing.. or just sky-watching.. as Carl Sagan put it.. is a truly humbling experience. Not just fun as a hobby, to spot a Saturn here or an Orion constellation there, or to make up shapes in the stars imagining them to be something out of our imagination.

Its a very relieving one too. How many nights I have looked at that clear black expanse, peppered with infinitely many tiny pinpoints of stars, and felt.. The Universe is so daarn big man ! There are billions of galaxies out there, uncountably many worlds unexplored, forms and phenomenons yet undiscovered ! And we are just a small part of it ! So why worry about some small mistake we did yesterday.. or some deadline thats about to come tomorrow. Its just a small nothingness in the scheme of things of the universe we see out there. Why worry ?

I still recall frequent star-gazing sessions I had with a cousin. The topic would start from astronomy, go over a wide range of topics, and generally always fade into some vague topic about fate or the future or of that sort. We attach so much importance to what happens around us, worry in the smallest of things instead of delighting in them. While all I am, is a single organism among zillions, on a small pale blue dot called Earth.

Next time something insignificant seems to nag you, remember these words from a famous address by Carl Sagan, from 'The pale blue dot' that inspires this feeling. The address is in reference to the photo on the right, a pic of Earth taken by Voyager 1 from a large distance. See where we stand. Earth. A pale blue dot near the centre. (The 'pale blue dot' also carries an environmental message that I simply loved)

" Consider again that dot (Earth). 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, ... every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, .... every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. "