A Pale Blue Dot

This excerpt from Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

I find this "ode" from Sagan very calming, as much so as when I stare across the road from where I live there is a big house, an old church manse which tall leafy trees, I watch them sway in the wind, it calms the heart, rests the soul then reading this over and over puts any woes I have into perspective as to measure what we are in this life "a mustard burp, momentarily tangy and then forgotten in the air" But yet I struggle like Sisyphus attempting to gain what an other will deny and as I near the top the boulder rolls back down again but just like Sisyphus I will keep trying even if its for an eternity which it already feels like. Mayflies have the shortest lifespan on Earth. Their life lasting only for 24 hours. In fact some mayfly die within few hours. So mayflies spend most of their lifetime as nymphs. Within this short period of life they form groups and dance together on all available surfaces, I guess my point is (if I have one) is life is too short, yes do put things in perspective but keep fighting for what is right, Karma will deal with the haters and abuser, there is a natural balance to things, to cradle your child in your arms, to hear his first words and reach out to receive his little hand when its offered, to hear him say that he loves you...these are the special moments no one can steal, no one can make you forget...these moments are your universe...the ones who cause you the problems will fade out over time but your loves such as family are eternal. “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known” but always remember another great speech from another great man "We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special"