Op-Ed Article

Perspective

Regardless if you are a movie star, sports celebrity, multi-billionaire, powerful politician, corporate CEO, etc., or if you are unemployed, enmeshed in school or job issues, struggling with family or health problems, or coping well in general; if your are young or old, fat or skinny, tall or short, black, white, or anything else, it's important to step back and place the situation in perspective by asking…. Who are we and where do we fit; not just in our own city, province, Canada or the world at large, but where do we really fit in the whole picture?

Egocentrics aside, in reality we are infinitely dwarfed as individuals, both as a species and indeed as a planet when compared to the universe and our place in it.  Earth comes off as being smaller than a grain of sand in the largest of deserts.  Think you have control over your world? Well, all of us at this moment are hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour (MPH) as we orbit the sun in our solar system and rotate once every 25,000 miles over a 24 hour period.  In addition, our solar system itself is orbiting around our galaxy, the Milky Way.  This trip takes a mere 250 million years to complete at an average speed of some 580,000 MPH.  So here we are, at the top of the food chain, the most intelligent and dominant creatures on earth; the all powerful human species, so full of ourselves that many of us think we have the power to even permanently warm up the planet.  Imagine that!  In addition, many believe that God created us in his own image.

But why is it then that if the universe's age was expressed in minutes it would be 72 hours old, and our planet would be 24 hours old and alas we all important humans would only be 4 seconds old.  Hmmm, seems a bit strange doesn't it?  Yes our universe has been around for 13.5 billion years and consists of several billions of galaxies with our Milky Way galaxy alone having from 200 to 400 billion stars in it bigger than our sun and is so nearly incomprehensively large that it would take over 180 years to pass through its diameter traveling at 186,000 miles per SECOND (the speed of light).  Another humbling thought is that if our tiny little planet earth was not fortuitously tilted at 23.5 degrees we would not even experience our changing seasons, which I am sure we all take for granted.

So, for those amongst us who may suffers from hubris or conversely, if paralyzing worry or feelings of low self esteem have some of us down, let's do try to keep things in perspective shall we?  No human exists or has ever existed that had or has power, position, fortune or problems important enough to ever remotely matter in the grand scheme of things.  We've all won the lottery of life folks by having been born as humans, living in one of the best parts of one of the best positioned planets within a solar system located in just one of several billions of galaxies found within a boundless and very inhospitable universe.  Let's all just be thankful!

Mickey Moulder