Thursday, August 27, 2009

In perspective


I ran across this on StumbleUpon. It really puts things into perspective for me. I've always known that the earth is small but I never was able to see a model that made it clear untill now. It is amazing to me that there are things that large in the universe and that they are so far away that despite their vast size we cannot see them with our naked eye. Do you know how big that means the universe has to be? I've always been told it has no end but now I see that infinity is a very large thing. This means that I am a very small thing. It makes me wonder, that with all of the stuff going on in the world, what difference can I make. Even if I try to the best of my abilities I will not be able to make that big of a difference in the world. But the point is, I will make a difference. Just by existing, i make a difference. I read a book by Jonathan Safran Foer by the name of
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. There is a part in the book where a young boy questions his dead father's purpose in life. He speaks of dropping from a helicopter in the middle of the Sahara desert and taking a pair of tweezers and picking up one grain of sand and moving it ten centimeters. He asks what difference would it make. He then realizes that it made all of the difference in the world. He changed the Sahara desert. No one would ever notice or care. he would never win an award for what he did but he did make a difference. If it weren't for him the Sahara desert would never be that way he had made it. My point is that no matter how small and insignificant something may seem, it never is.
I would recommend this site because it gives the viewer something important to ponder over. I didn't find any sources on the page so it must be an original idea or someone didn't give credit where it is due. My question is, is there another planet or star yet to be discovered that would dwarf even Antares.

1 comment:

Lella said...

That is a great reference for putting your point into perspective. I agree that the small changes are important. It is all about relativity; imagine how a microscopic organism upon that piece of sand would have had its life changed!

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