Calvin's epilepsy—the suffering it causes, the challenges it creates, the sorrow it provokes—often gives me pause to consider bigger things, incites me to contemplate life and all of its complexities from different perspectives. Sometimes I peer from the inside looking out, at others I gaze from the outside looking in. And always, with regard to the world—the universe—I am forever humbled.
How
vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre
upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars
are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and
matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the
Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters
of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.
—Christiaan Huygens, The Immense Distance Between the Sun and the Planets, 1698
When
you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those
differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and
you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and
why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people.
—Frank Borman, Apollo 8, December 1968
The world looks marvelous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile. Everybody, all of us down there, not only in Israel, have to keep it clean and good.
—Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, 29 January 2003
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| Alex Churney, A Milky Way Shadow at Loch Ard Gorge |
—Christiaan Huygens, The Immense Distance Between the Sun and the Planets, 1698
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| Associated Press |
—Frank Borman, Apollo 8, December 1968
The world looks marvelous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile. Everybody, all of us down there, not only in Israel, have to keep it clean and good.
—Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, 29 January 2003
I don't know if I've ever told you, but one of my dreams is to travel into space and look out a window at the Earth, below. I always wish for it on birthday cakes (along with Sophie's cessation of seizures) and tell my boys that I hope they'll be able to buy a trip for me one day before I die, a very old lady. :)
ReplyDeleteeee, i'm with ya, sister, on both wishes. xoxoxoxoox
ReplyDeleteSooo true! Despite the fact that seizures are definitely the worst memories I have and, luckily probably will be regardless of any worldly problems I face in my life, they always have given me a cause deepen my thoughts a bit. Like how seizures seemed to drag on forever--a bad trip that I couldn't get out of. But then I'd finally touch back down in reality after a mere 15 seconds and nothing had changed. Then you realize that time is completely a construction of your neurons and that the tiniest bit of sodium rushing through them can completely change the way that you see what previously seemed unchangeable. I still think about that fairly frequently... I'll come to space with you guys--screw my education.
ReplyDelete~Julianna