Having things keep you up at night is not always bad, especially if that thing keeping you up is profound and thought provoking. I was walking back to my apartment the other day and after reaching for my keys, I looked at the sky before opening the door. There was this bright light in the sky, bigger than the other stars surrounding it, which led me to believe it was a planet. I started to think how far away it was. I began to think about other distances: the distance from earth to the moon, a distance that would take a little under nine years of walking to reach.
Seeing a young adult standing in the middle of a parking lot, alone, looking up at the sky around 11:12 p.m. probably did not summon the most flattering thoughts in the minds of possible onlookers, but I was in another world. I was thinking about how far it was from earth to the moon, then from the moon to the edge of our solar system.
This is a distance difficult to understand in the mind’s eye since no one has any reference point to use or anything to compare it to. If I wanted to know the length of a blue whale, I could ask a marine biologist who would say, “It’s about x [number of] school buses long,” and I would go on my way. But I could not comprehend the distance from the moon to the solar system.
I went farther. What about the distance from the edge of our solar system to the edge of the Milky Way? Farther. What about from the Milky Way and beyond, where our galaxy we belong to is just a dot among other dots that comprise a neighborhood of galaxies? At a certain distance these clusters of galaxies resemble the stars we see at night. My mind was starting to melt.
Now if you zoom out a little farther you will find that these galaxies form superclusters, which is pretty much a cluster of clusters of galaxies. At this point, I had a flash of insight and a funny feeling in my chest.
If you feel that, you know you’ve done it right. You know you have just blown your mind. And if for some reason the infinite minuteness of our existence doesn’t blow your mind, check your pulse. In the grand scheme of things and in relation to the annals of time, we are nothing more than a wisp of smoke. This reminds me of an Albert Einstein quote: “Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.”
You can just say the words “the universe is huge,” and go through the motions, but then you’re not doing yourself any services. Actually try to comprehend and wrap your mind around this fact or any amazing fact. Wrap your mind around whatever deep idea your teacher presents you with.
For some reason or another, when my buddies and I go to the bars, our tendency to spew facts to each other has a positive relation with our level of blood alcohol content. On one of these occasions, I recall a conversation in which we each described the new world view our respective majors have conferred us with.
As a communication major, I discussed that my discipline was not simply about finding meaning in the messages we send but how and why we assign certain meanings to our messages, which help us understand the most basic questions about humans.
I concluded by saying that some of the things I learn keep me up at night. My friend is a biology major, and he questioned the difference between himself, or any of us, and a table or a chair. When it comes down to it, we are all made of the same stuff. That is what, he says, keeps him up at night. I challenge you find something that will do the same.
Ben Horowitz can be contacted at
bhorowitz@keene-equinox.com