The Pale Blue Dot

"...A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994.

The Pale Blue Dot of Earth. Image: NASA / JPL.

"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."

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994.

The excerpt above is from Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Or maybe you've heard it somewhere? Yes, this is the same narration from the video with the same title, Pale Blue Dot.

A quick story from this historical piece; Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996), an American astronomer, planetary scientist, astrophysicist, author, and poet, once requested NASA to turn the cameras mounted on Voyager 1 to face the earth for the last time, just before it shuts its cameras down for eternity. What he had in mind was to capture the image I have shown you earlier in this post—the pale blue dot, suspended in a sunbeam—that later became the inspiration for Sagan to write his book.

This pale blue dot is the only planet known (yet) that can support life, your home, and mine. We live and die on this very planet yet we live like this planet is our own servant whose purpose ends when we die. I am completely aware that it's human nature to take care of themselves before others. Even so, is it really necessary for us to always think about ourselves? Aren't your grandchild's child also your kin? How about their spouse's family? Aren't they become your family too? When you start thinking about it, suddenly your 'kin' become the whole human race, and after you, there'll be many generations that will come and go.

The picture above really makes me think of how insignificant I am inside this universe. That picture was captured from a distance of more than 6 billion kilometers from earth, and yet we can see how small the earth is in that picture.

How big or small we are doesn't really matter when we unite as a human race—not Caucasian, not Asian, not African, just human. When we move forward and forgive each other, but never forget the mistakes we made, we can start to see a new era where we can learn from our past and move forward as one. Together, we can make big things. Bigger than ourselves.

Let me quote the brave pilot Amelia Earhart's mantra:

"No borders, just horizons – only freedom."

-Amelia Earhart.

There. No borders, just horizons.

We are not a singular species, we need each other. We are not perfect, we complete each other. We are helpless, we lift each other.

Doesn't matter where you are, doesn't matter who you love, no matter whom you believe; being kind to each other won't cost you a penny, let alone a Ph.D.

Be kind. We don't know what hardships someone has endured.

A smile and kind gestures never cost you a fortune, but somehow can give you one.

*Shameless plug: This article has been posted previously on my personal blog achmadaul.com