still one world

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.

But when I heard of the bombings in Boston yesterday, not knowing whether the perpetrators were foreign or domestic, I thought of all of the hate that exists in the world and wondered, why? Then I was reminded of these quotes:

 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

Alex Churney, A Milky Way Shadow at Loch Ard Gorge

 

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

Boston Marathon bombings, April 15, 2013 photo by John Tlumacki, Boston Globe