Personal Essays

As I stand here in this field, the chirping of crickets and serenading of frogs my only company, I marvel at the sky above me. Among the millions upon millions of stars in our galaxy, perhaps another world-weary mind is thinking the same thought as me: are we alone? And if we were to voice this thought at the same time and send off a message in the other’s direction we’d both be long dead before we’d receive it. That’s how vast the gulf between worlds can be. It would take hundreds perhaps tens of thousands of years for us to communicate even at the speed of light.

Almost every atom on this planet, those that go into making you and me, the rocks and air we breathe, came from stars long dead. Their gaseous explosions provided the grains that grew life on this planet. It is a wondrous thought indeed.