It's come to my attention over the course of my life, and indeed of humanity's short existence, that we inhabit a universe of inconceivable scale. Our universe is ancient and young, creative and destructive, dishearteningly empty and majestically inhabited all at the same time and never staying the same for a single millisecond. The unstoppable wonder that is the scientific method has deduced that our universe is somewhere in the region of 13.7 billion years old. The human species is just under 200,000 years old. Think about that for a moment. Really try to grasp how small you and I and everyone else really is. We are a speck; a single drop of water in all the waters on Earth, a single grain of sand in all the beaches in all the world, a single explosion in a Michael Bay popcorn flick. We are, all of us, really very small and insignificant.
Our species' collective refusal to accept this is indeed a part of our inherent arrogance. For as long as man has learned to walk on his own two feet, he has exploited his fellow primate for his own benefit. Religions and governments have all existed in one way or another to feed the egos of those willing to forego their in-built empathetic sensibilities. Even to this day, the short-sighted elite, the corporations and the governments; they squander the only home we have to satisfy their self-indulgent apathy. This unquenchable greed has extended to the lower levels of society and infected the collective societal consciousness as well. All people seem interested in is securing a comfortable existence for themselves - wasting and consuming whatever comes their way as long as it satisfies the inhabitants of their tiny little bubble. To be rather blunt, today's society does not give the slightest inclination of a fuck about the bigger picture. Hey, as long as we're content, who gives a shit about everything else?
Here I'd like to go back to belittling you and the people you love, because frankly we are all in need of some perspective. This is you: a single human out of seven billion humans. Along with all the other humans, you live in one tiny corner of a single planet that orbits one star out of 100 billion stars in this one single galaxy. And this galaxy is still nothing, because there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in every single direction around it. After really thinking about this, do you actually think you still have any weight in all of this? You are unimaginably tiny and the sooner you realise this, the better off we all will be.
As you may or may not have gathered from those previous few paragraphs, I've been rather cynical about this whole affair. Another thing that you may or may not have noticed is that this post is entitled "The Universe Doesn't Care About You and That's Okay", which would suggest some sort of uplifting reassurance with regards to my scathing critique of our species. I assure you, dear reader, that reassurance is most certainly assured. It is indeed okay that the universe does not care about you because when one truly and genuinely realises this, one is amazed at how much humility this revelation bestows upon an individual.
To think that a person can learn to see their priorities not in their own comfort, but in the comfort and stability of others is a fact I find genuinely wonderful. If one can imagine a world in which human cooperation and advancement far outweighs the murky waters of consumerism and self-preservation and prejudices and apathy, one must only take the first step and get some perspective. Not to bombard you with new age hippie philosophy, but John Lennon had a point. The universe and existence at large may behave with the utmost indifference towards you, life itself might not care in the slightest, but your friends and your family and your loved ones are quite the opposite. Take comfort in those you love and learn to think of the bigger picture.
As the late, wise and marvellously enlightening Carl Sagan once said, "we are the universe experiencing itself." As I said, the universe is mind-bogglingly vast, inhabited only by the most beautiful of sights, the most impossible of concepts, the most endless of knowledge to absorb and the most wonderful motivations for living to ever be. So go out there and experience it. Enjoy the little things and the big things and the things that you might never get the chance to enjoy again. You have this one and only life to make it count, and our indifferent universe could end it at any moment. You never know, you might even have fun.
Okay, that was a blog post. That's new.
