Feeling Small - In a Good Way
I know it’s a common thing to refer to the expansiveness of the universe to drive home the point of how small and insignificant we are. And if you truly dwell on this idea, it really is a powerful sensation. To be but a speck in the grand scheme of the universe. Another similar one is time. The earth is estimated to be over 4.5 billion years old. That’s 4,500,000,000. If you try to actually comprehend the how many years that is, I doubt you will truly be able to. Our small and short life here is not even a speck in the grand scheme of things. But that isn’t why I started to write this post. What I wanted to write this post about is actually something ironically different, yet strangely the same.
It’s what is beneath our feet. Along the same vein as to the vastness of the universe, and the seemingly endless amount of time that has passed - I get a similar feeling when I see a colony of ants pass beneath my feet and disappear below the ground.
Remember when you were a kid and you would lay on the ground and look eye level with the ground, viewing the world as an insect might? Feeling so big can make us feel actually quite small, don’t you think? An entire universe, ecosystem, and network exists unexplored - right under our feet.
I sat and watched a colony of ants that were all working in unison to carry various goods along a long trail they had created. I hunched down and watched closely - some big, some small. Some working in pairs to carry items seemingly 5 times their size. The longer I watched, the more I thought about what went on in that vast world of theirs? What pushed them to do what they did? Did they think like you and me? What kind of lives did they live? What type of underground city were they submerging into?
And this is just one colony, of one subfamily, of one species. What else goes on in this miniature world that lives parallel to our own, yet evades our curiosity and attention.
We humans often like to center ourselves in this universe. Telling ourselves that our ‘advanced intellect’ places us at a level of superiority. But how much do we really know about the world around us? I mean…how much do we really know. I feel like we are at a point in history where many of us feel like science has started to uncover a vast majority of natures secrets - but I think that the universe holds far more secrets than any of us can imagine.
Not to go down a rabbit hole (lets go down a rabbit hole), but what is ‘intellect’. How convenient that we have ourselves (the human species), created our own ideas and definitions of intellect, and then proceeded to name ourselves the master of it. Let me go even further down this rabbit hole: what makes this idea of ‘intellect’ or ‘intelligence’ so important. I feel like this probably sounds like a stupid question to most, but that is sort of my point exactly. We as humans operate and function in the only way we know how. We only can view the world through our human eyes.
I think many people, if not most, see animals as a ‘machine made of meat’ - that’s to say that they aren’t ‘sentient’, for a lack of a better word. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they couldn’t be. What I am saying is that we don’t know, and it’s naive to make the assumption otherwise.
I don’t know how I ended up on this tangent, but what I guess I originally came here to say is something along the lines of:
The stars make us feel small.
The expanse of time makes us feel insignificant.
The critters’ world beneath our feet makes me feel like a giant,
a giant who is too large to understand the depth of meaning of those who are small;
a giant who is too large and out of touch with the small details and realities that make up this world;
a world where those who scurry beneath our feet are able to understand the most intricate and minute beauties that we will never be able to comprehend.
Worlds live, clash, thrive, and and fall beneath our feet - and we are none the wiser;
we continue our meager lives on a pedestool
while maybe a war wages below,
or maybe drought or flood wipes out an entire colony.
We live, oblivious to the possible wonders or devastation that are happening below.
… I got a bit carried away, I know. But still. Something to think about, no?