Do You Feel Lucky?

Do You Feel Lucky? by Andrew Stratton. Posted in March Resident Newsletter at NICI

Imagine the Earth was the size of a ½” marble held between two fingers in front of you. The moon would be the size of a BB and about 15 inches away. The sun would be about a 4.5ft sphere, just under 500ft away. Pluto would orbit 3.5 miles out from the sun, making the diameter of our solar system alone, 7 miles wide. A ½” inch Earth, in a 7 mile solar system. If you were to zoom out and look at our galaxy so that it was the size of North America, you would have to zoom all the way back to see our solar system, which would fit in the palm of your hand being slightly smaller than a racquet ball. Everything we know about ourselves, as a planet and species, orbiting its microscopic trajectory.

Maintaining that 1/2″ Earth in your fingers, suppose you can see a microscopic spaceship, our current fastest, taking off and leaving its atmosphere. It would take that spaceship 70,000 years to make the 25,000-mile journey, a full trip around the Earth, to reach the next closest star to us. In reality, Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light-years away, and the farthest star, at the edge of the universe, is 14.7 billion light-years away.

Coming back to Earth, pretend that we and a few friends step into a time machine, which then takes us a few thousand feet into the air for a bird’s eye view, and takes us anywhere we want to go. We set the dial to go backwards in time at a constant rate of 100 years per second and hit go. After watching the Roman Empire fall and rise in 20 seconds, the Pyramids be built after 45 seconds, we would then settle in and get comfortable for 14 months to watch time reverse until we are able to witness the first signs of life form on Earth, another 3 months to watch the Earth itself form, and another 2 years from there to witness the big bang. If we were to compress the Earth’s entire 4.54ish billion-year history into a 24-hour period, human civilization and all of our recorded history would take place in the last 200 milliseconds, a blink of an eye, before midnight.

Life can be brutal and miserable. This place, among much worse forms of pain and suffering, can be demoralizing. Feeling trapped and defeated is a common deal; impatience and irritation are frequent flyers in the emotional universe, making it easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Experiencing love’s embrace; watching little ones grow up; laughing until you cry; smiling at your own joys of childhood; accomplishing a major goal; making it through what you are in right now; listening to your favorite music on repeat. You are you, with suffering and love.

Holding that ½” Earth, looking 3.5 miles out to the edge of the solar system, and letting a single flutter of a hummingbird wing represent your entire life….. Do you feel lucky?