The Big Picture--

 

the long and short of it, the before and after.

How you and I got here to this time and place.

Consider this—

The Earth is approximately 4-billion years old.

During that time, given the evolution of every

living thing, about 117-billion humans have

lived on this planet.

Driven by inertia and gravity, Earth’s elliptical

orbit around the sun is at an astonishing 67,000

miles per hour. It rotates on its axis at approxi-

mately 1000-miles per hour as the sun in turn

makes its way around the Milky Way Galaxy

at some 514,000-miles per hour.

(Now bear with me, I’ll get to my point in short

order, relatively speaking.)

It’s all very complicated, you see, considering

myriad scientific calculations which include biology,

anthropolgy, astronomy, astrophysics, quantum

physics and so on with which I am neither qualified

nor educated to contemplate, evaluate or even discuss.

Nonetheless, in order to illustrate my feeble intent,

I need to express my hypothesis with incomprehensibly,

ginormous numbers.

Now given all the scientific data and throwing in the

history and generational evolution it took we humans

to get here where we are today, I must utilize every

tool I have at my disposal (“Alexa”) in order to relate

the seriousness and complexity of our situation as

fellow cosmic travelers in this complex and massive

conglomerate known as the Universe, at least the

dimensional iteration of which we happen to inhabit.

In summation—

How hard the push must have been, and how strong

the pull is to this day. 4-billion years is a long, long way

to have come. And oh, the round and round elliptical

revolutions (inertia versus gravitational pull). And the

annual tilting on the axis, how in the world does it all

happen?

Yet here we are, nonetheless, the oblivious creatures

along for the ride of our lives. And all the life that is,

and all the life that ever was or will be is worried and

bemused by our history and petty beliefs. To us, the

course of our lives is simply predictable, birth, death,

all the payments and expenditures, the credits and

debits in between. This over-and-over-again repetition

can’t continue on forever, however. Oh well, what’s

forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, or a hundred

years compared to the universal ride of life we’re on?

And as the old saying goes, “Round and round we

go. Where she stops no one knows.” Dark matter,

the quantum and astrophysics powers that be are

in control.

And as we go round and round on the cosmic wheel

of eventuality, we fallible humans foolishly tend to

rely upon predictability. Not to worry, there’s not a

damned thing we can do about it anyway.

Take all of this in if you can in its immense, convoluted

and complex entirety, all the known and unknown we

face in this day and time. Given the numbers, imagine

all the realities and alternative possibilities.

Instead of you and I it could have been the unborn

other guy. And as of the here and now, why did we

decide on Burger King rather than Wendy’s for lunch?

Man, all this compelling and inane shit blows my

flummoxed and friggin’ mind! Scientifically speaking.

                                   -30-

Chris Hanch 3-22-2030