A photo to stay humble
“A photo is worth a thousand words.”
It might come as no surprise that the phrase has been overused by photographers all around.
Yet, one of the best photos that hold true to the above idiom isn’t taken from a photographer, but from a small spacecraft zipping past at blinding speeds across the astronomical sea to the unknown.
Here is a picture of planet Earth, taken by NASA’s space probe Voyager 1. In case you missed it, squint your eyes and look again at the right side of the beam of sunlight.
Amid the fuzziness, that tiny speck in the middle of it is our planet.
That is our home.
The photo was aptly summarised and enshrined, thanks to the late cosmologist Mr. Carl Sagan,
“…every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Just like the planet Earth, we are probably the only unique individual among the 7 billion people in this world. We are just a speck — analogous to a pixel, in which even if we are out of the equation, has no effect on the overall grandeur of things.
While this awareness makes us feel insignificant, it is also telling.
It makes us ponder about our problems, our setbacks, and our individual existence and how trivial they are in context with the universe. But it also reveals about our uniqueness, our story and our life.
Balance
After much introspection, I came to believe that the best explanation for life is about finding a balance. Everything happens for a reason and Earth is no exception. I for one cannot believe that something was created without any purpose, as affrmed by the natural law of cause and effect.
The main takeaway from this is that we have to acknowledge that our lives are interconnected, like a web that makes the whole.
For every pixel is insignificant alone, yet without it, does not give meaning to the entire picture.
