I hope that from time to time you stop to think about scale. I don’t quite know when it happened to me, but sometime in the last 4 years (the time of oh so many awakenings for me) I realised a lot more about my place in the universe.
Most of us have come a ‘long’ way since the flat earth days, and the earth centric view of the universe. Sure we may not understand too much more than the big bang theory, but we at least have some idea of earth in the solar system, and possibly the solar system in the galaxy, and maybe just maybe, our galaxy in relation to the other galaxies.
For me (and I suspect a lot of other people) thinking along about such vast physical scales and immense time frames, is nearly impossible. I have read only a little on the subject and a lot of it is well above my ability to truly comprehend. The more I have learnt however, the more I am literally stunned. Once you start to comprehend the scales, the insignificance of Earth and our infinitesimally short lifespans on this planet dawns on you. This is a very humbling lesson and one that I have taken to heart. It has, most certainly helped shape my current view on life.
To help give you a bit more perspective have a look at this interesting collection of images on Sietch blog.
linkage: all in perspective, sietch blog, world processor, pluto not a planet anymore on wiki
[...] I talked the other day about getting a sense of our place in the Universe by thinking about the immenseness of the solar system, then the galaxies and then the Universe itself. Well the same thing happens when you start thinking about the really small things. And then the things that make those up. And so on. [...]
[...] update: following along the theme of data visualisation to give us all some perspective I have made a few new blog entries remapping the world visually and the universe, it is all about perspective [...]