Is That All There Is?

Over the weekend I saw a fantastic old animated film by the NFB called "Cosmic Zoom". It starts out with a peaceful scene of a boy and his dog in a rowboat on a river. The "camera" then pulls back right to the outer reaches of the universe, and along the way you can see perspectives of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy and the sheer vastness of all existence. But then, the "camera" zooms back in toward the earth and the boat. It zooms in toward a mosquito bite, and continues to zoom right down to the tiniest sub-atomic particles. The film ends the way it began, back with the boy and his dog in a boat on the river. In about five minutes, the film explores both the infinite and infinitesimal.

Seeing something like that makes you wonder why you are here. We are completely out of touch with everything vast, and completely oblivious to everything tiny. And how does anything we do in our lives have any affect on the vast universe? All we are in touch with is our own planet, and even that isn't permanent. Our sun won't exist forever, and when the day comes that it doesn't, will any of our recorded history matter? The truth is that everything we know in life is just an illusion, like a house of mirrors. To say "perception is reality" isn't just a cliche, it's bang on.

I'm not trying to wax philosophical here, because I'm certainly not a great mind in that field. But it's just a bit depressing sometimes to realize that we are less than quarks in the universe, and all of our ambitions, hopes and accomplishments really don't amount to a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. In that sense, we are truly equal. And it makes all of our petty squabbles even more petty. But since we're here, we have to try to do our best not to suffer to much and not allow others to suffer too much. That's the best I can come up with right now.