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A subtitle for this blog could be "The cosmos, spaceship earth, and the 9/11 boatlift." That sounds like a stretch, but here goes:

I know that not everyone is as fascinated as I am by the universe and all its complexity. But recently, I've come across a few items that I found really exciting. More to the point for this blog, some of them reminded me of a message I need to hear periodically. The capsule version is something like this: “You are here. In the scheme of things, the scale of your ‘here’ is seriously unimpressive. Share nicely.”

What first triggered this train of thought was this video, a narrated, 3D tour of the universe. It shows the many extraordinary massive “structures”—so-called “sheets,” “walls,” and “filaments,” each of which contains of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, each of which contains billions of stars. Just watch 5 minutes of it, and you’ll get a picture of this unimaginably vast and complex cosmos. (FYI: The video is narrated by someone with a pronounced accent, so it’s sometimes hard to pick up every word. But it doesn’t matter. Just look for familiar labels like “Milky Way” (our home galaxy) and notice the recurring features of the universe–the Great Wall, the Southern Wall, etc.–for hints about the relative importance of our corner of the universe.)

This video, in turn, brought to mind a session I attended at the Conference on World Affairs last April (which I wrote about here at the time). The discussion was about the first photos of the earth from the moon, pictures you likely remember, like this one:

For many folks, early photos of the earth from space were inescapable proof of the meaningless of boundaries and borders, of the inseparability of nations. And for some, the first photos of the earth from the moon evoked another message. The sight of the earth floating against a black, empty sky were stark announcements of how alone we are. How distant from anything else in the vast void of space. How we have to be kind to one another, because we are really all we’ve got. It’s this latter message I heard watching the tour-of-the-universe video. The “Our world is so minuscule” message. I’m reminded of a postcard I used to have sitting in a frame on my desk. This image also made the rounds for a while as a t-shirt. It looked something like this: 

Finally, to bring home the message of the vast cosmos and our collective place in it, a friend recently sent me a link to another video. This one is on a totally different subject, a distinctly earth-bound reality: the 9/11 boatlift. Although I’d heard plenty of stories about 9/11, I hadn’t heard this one—magnificent though it is. Regardless of whether you’ve encountered this tale, I encourage you to watch the video. I think it will surprise and touch you. And remind you that “here” is a space we all share. We somehow know that in times of crisis. But I, for one, easily forget it in my everyday life. A reminder never hurts: 

We are here. We need to play nicely with others.