Suppose the age of the Earth was compacted into a
single year. Then my life would blink into existence for just half of one
second.
That is infinitesimal. That is insignificant.
That’s time. What about my mass?
The Earth’s mass is approximately 6 x 1024
kg. That is a 6 followed by 24 zeroes. That’s a lot. I won’t even consider the mass
of the whole Solar System (the Sun is 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar
System,) or the mass of our entire galaxy. As to the mass of the Universe –
mindboggling!1
So, just in terms of the mass of the Earth, my mass (as
well as my lifetime) is also infinitesimal and insignificant.
Thus, when I consider my mass and the length of time I
have been here, I am a flicker of time, a speck of dust, insignificant in the
vast space and time of the cosmos.
This is all I am.
Such a perspective may seem desolate and worthless.
Yet, it is only a perspective. It is a viewpoint that
considers myself as an individual, separate from others, from nature and the
Earth. It is a place disconnected from the cosmos.
There is another way to look at things. This is the
view espoused so poetically by William Blake in the first four lines of his
oft-quoted poem:2
‘To
see the world in a grain of sand
And
heaven in a wild flower
Hold
infinity in the palm of your hand
And
eternity in an hour.’
When I look at things through similar eyes to those of
Blake things change – dramatically. I become inseparable from nature,
indivisible from the Earth and all that is.
I am the cosmos, wrapped up in a tiny, temporal human
form.
Instead of saying to myself ‘this is all I am,’ I
can tell myself that ‘this is ALL I am.’
I am now the world in the grain of sand and eternity
in an hour. That is significant.
I am part of this vast cosmos; indeed, it is possible
to think of myself as being the cosmos, albeit embodied in this tiny
insignificant body that lasts but a flicker of time. I do not pretend that such
thinking is easy; indeed, most of the time it is nigh on impossible. Yet, it is
worth pondering, and doing so often.
The seemingly contradictory perspectives of all
and ALL brings with them a responsibility to act and live from the
perspective of ALL whilst inhabiting and accepting a body that is all
I am.
Moreso, this responsibility becomes innate,
instinctive, intuitive. Again, not easy. There are practices we can nurture and
cultivate that allow us to get closer to these concepts however.
Spending mindful time in nature, meditating, chanting,
trance dance, and other rituals and states can assist. The reader is encouraged
to discover their own practices for doing so.
Notes:
1. For those who are interested: the Solar System is 333,000
times the mass of the Earth, the galaxy is 3,000,000,000,000 times that of the
Solar System. And the Universe? It is 166 million times the mass of our galaxy.
I’ll leave you to compute how much more the mass of the Universe is comparted
with the mass of the Earth. Here’s a hint: It’s huge!
2. William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, written
1803, published 1863.
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