I have a favorite thought that never fails to ground me when I am down, or sad, or lonely, or upset, or even slightly depressed. I guess I am some or all of those things this past month or so.
In the grand scheme of things - which to my way of thinking is no scheme at all - my life is exactly one grain of sand in all of the sand on all of the beaches on this earth.
I think about the number of human beings that have walked the face of this earth since we became human. I think of how short each and every life has ever been since the first human. I think of all the humans that have lived and died before me, up to this last minute, and I take comfort in knowing that I count among them as one grain of sand in a vast ocean of beaches full of billions of grains of sand.
I used to fly a lot. Many cross-country trips or trips up the eastern seaboard after dark. I'd look down at the brightly-lit neighborhoods of the metropolitan areas 32,000 feet below, and the realization of how insignificant my problems were amongst the millions of people living their lives down there would just smack me upside the head. The sparsely populated areas with the far-spaced lights made me ache in imagined empathic loneliness for the desolate conditions below. Night flying in a window seat always inspires the comforting "grain of sand" analogy.
I don't even have any real problems these days. But I can still be hurt, and I can still be too tired or too stressed (with work, but even that is a good thing, right?) and I still worry about the mundane bits of my life as well as the state of humans and their lives and injustice and unfairness all over this freakin planet.
Yet, when I remember how truly insignificant the worries that sometimes fill my world are, when I think about that grain of sand that is me in the universe, I just have to laugh at myself.
It's like Rick Blaine once said "Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid. "
Sláinte!
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Still4Hill
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Comments
Thank you for reminding me to laugh at myself!
Raising a glass to you, dear girl,
Sláinte!
Sláinte mhaith!
Hi Patricia, thanks for stopping by. I think it's the TOTAL insiginificance of it all that helps calm me. That said, there are, of course, significant peoplet hroughout the ages, but I think realizing that I wasn't going to be one of them was the day I grew up :-)
Hi Lea - good point. I occassionally expand these thoughts beyond planet earth to ITS total insignificance in the universe of universes but oy! That makes the grain of sand absolutely ridiculous!
GIPenguin- how do ya do it with no booze in Saudi? Thanks for the comment, I am happy to report that I laugh often.
Hi Marie! Casablanca and The Sound of Music - the only two movies I can watch over and over countless times.
Lainey - I get what you're saying. I feel that the total insignificance of my life is mitigated by doing well by other humans. Treating people well, and helping individual others whatever way possible while we're here. But yes, otherwise, my very brief time here is totally insignificant.
Theo, I don't go "cosmic". I know that I'll never know what it's REALLY all about, and thinking too much along those lines is futile for me. I do know that we need to be kind to each other while we're here. Thanks for stopping by whooooooo whoooooooo.