notebook pg 15; i am so infinitesimally small, why do i matter?
the earth is so big compared to me, but atom sized to the universe - existential crisis entry
hi substack
i recently finished reading Orbital by Samathna Harvey, and i posted a little review on it on my instagram. this book has changed the course of my thinking ever since i have read it.
i love astronomy. if you know me, you know that i dream of being an astronomer. i love physics and math, i love the universe, i love the mysteries we can’t seem to unfold. i love that we literally mean nothing if we look at the scale of us, and of the next black hole.
i have always known things from a scientific point of view. of course, i know that the earth is massive compared to us. that the solar system is massive compared to the earth, and that out sun is incredibly tiny compared to the center of the milky way galaxy. but when i started reading the first few pages of Orbital, something inside me shifted. i don’t know if i can look at my problems the same way anymore.
Think a new thought, they sometimes tell themselves. The thoughts you have in orbit are so grandiose and old. Think a new one, a completely fresh unthought one. But there are no new thoughts. They’re just old thoughts born into new moments - and in these moments is the thought: without that earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep dark unswimmable sea.
pg 8 & pg 9, Orbital, Samntha Harvey
i have cried endless streams of tears. i ask myself if my tears have yet to be evaporated into the atmosphere, if it has transformed into loving rains that nurture the plants in the backyard of my bestfriend. have they traveled the pacific ocean in the form of a typhoon? will one day, when i become one with the soil, nurture the ground and grow new trees? and if i do, i hope the trees hold the memories i once had when i was a child riding my bike along the sea side.
and the more i think about the quotes in this book, i realize that yes - i am nothing, we are nothing. that the thoughts i think are atomically sized compared to our planet. yet the thoughts we think are the building blocks of our lives, exactly how atoms are the building blocks of us, of our existence, of everything.
Why would you do this? Trying to live where you can never thrive? Trying to go where the universe doesn’t want you when there’s a perfectly good earth just there that does. He’s never sure if man’s lust for space is curioisty or ingratitude. If this weird hot longing makes him a hero or an idiot. Undoubtedly something just short of either.
pg 49, Orbital, Samantha Harvey
of course, what i am repeating over and over is the cycle of life. and that being afraid of the future, and what is to come to us is normal. it is living - being born, and dying. yet this fear of dying is something i have recently overanalyzed. everything is temporary, decomposable, and will cease to exist one day. and consciousness is not something me, you, or even scientists understand. but it is something i am convinced will never fade away.
thinking thoughts is what we have done since the beginning of time, and though humans have existed for thousands of years, something tells me that wherever their bones may be found, their consciousness seeps through them in someway.
or maybe that is just something i tell myself to comfort myself in knowing that we live in an infinitely massive space of dark matter and stars that we can see with the confidence of our tools.
space is horrifying. an endless void surrounds us, making us ask the question of: what is the point? is there one? and how do we understand it? you may already have your answer - maybe you are spiritual, religious, or just choose to ignore this question. i wish i could, yet every time i close my eyes, i imagine the silence in space, hovering above our planet. i love research, and plan to do astronomy on the ground.
but just imagining being an astronaut, i think would answer my questions on life.
that there is nothing like earth, there is no one like us, and that there is no point to it all.
that my problems are the size of a proton if i hover above the atmosphere, a little pale blue dot that holds it all for me.
maybe that is all that matters.
that our atmosphere allows for us to see the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets, that our big, deep, and mysterious inky blue oceans hold secrets we should not uncover, and twinkle for us in the morning. and maybe it’s not all that bad, because my chance - and everyone’s chance - of being born is a chance so slim that it approaches zero. and it is temporary, but beautiful no matter what the problems may be.
do i matter? in terms of the universe, of course i do not. i am the size of a quark. i have my own wavelengths, and radiate whatever i radiate. i do matter to my books, they need someone to read them. i matter to my friends, they need someone to love and to be loved, i matter to my notebook, because it will be empty without my existential crises. i matter to my coffee machine, someone needs to make espressos - and it is i who will. i matter to the moon, someone needs to look at her and think for hours.
and your own version of how you matter is completely up to you. small things make the difference.
it is learning gratitude, may the circumstances be whatever they are.
thank you for reading :)
ps. read orbital it’s awesome
alia