Insignificantly Significant....

The significance of one's life is a question one asks at some point of time or the other. It is a question that even the greatest and the smallest of us asks and any answer we give each other or ourselves is never complete for even after having heard an answer, we are still left with a sense of incompleteness, a sense of dissatisfaction.

I have been plagued by the question a lot in the past 7 or 8 years and every time i would look up into the sky and imagine the planet we are on, teeming with life and activity, out to the moon orbiting our blue-green planet, out to the rest of the planets centered around our Sun that make up our star system, further out to the many star systems clustered around the core of our Galaxy and then the many millions of galaxies that dot the vast nothingness of Space, like small oasis's in a desert.

This thought would unfailingly depress me as i would always be awestruck by the small dot, that is me, on a slightly bigger dot, that is the Earth, tucked away in the Western Spiral of the Milky way, hurtling through space, a product of the Universe that is ever so vast, the sheer size of which, a human brain cannot comprehend.

So why? Why is it that we live, that we are given a maximum of 100 Human years to lead our lives, do whatever it is that we do, grow old and die. Why is it that we were given the ability to think, to speak, to reason, to invent, to discover, when the Universe within whose confines our Species occupies a tiny  microscopical pin-prick of space, is beyond our comprehension. It is such that we do not even know where or why this Universe came about into being. We are not even sure if our Universe is a part of something else. That the buck does not end with our 3 Dimensional Reality.

Life is the greatest expression in our Universe. Many may put love to be the greatest expression, many might say that how can Life be an expression in the first place? We humans express a range of things but without Life we wouldnt be here to express anything. Life is the Greatest Expression because it is an expression by our Universe. It is a product of favorable conditions for life, which as far as Humanity's limited knowledge goes, has never been replicated anywhere else in the Universe. It is a a result of several Free Floating Single Celled organisms deciding to clump together for a change in the liquid confines of Pre-Historic Earth. Life is the greatest expression because when it results in an intelligent species like ours gives rise to entities like Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Hawking and so on who obsessed with the Mysteries of the Universe attempt and succeed in unraveling a small part of it. Life is the Greatest Expression because it creates US, we who can marvel at the Universe, we who can partially understand the nature of the Universe our Creator and our Home.

Why is it then that this is so Ironic, that we who are the ultimate product of the Universe, that we who live, breathe, think, comprehend the Universe that envelopes us, why is it that our significance is molecularly microscopic, that our lives individually mean nothing. Some may say that it is whimsical to wish for individual human lives to mean something in the cosmological perspective and in a way they would be right.

But maybe the part we dont understand is the fact that everything in the Universe is its product, every star system, every nebulae, every Quasar, every Black hole, every supernova is a slave to the Laws of the 3 Dimensional reality we perceive. Everything in this universe is governed by the Scientific laws and principles we attribute to the nature of the Universe. But us? We are indeed governed by Scientific laws like those of Gravity, Inertia, Motion etc. but in our lives we have one thing that is unique, one right that is specific to Living Thinking Organisims, the right of CHOICE.

Our Choices govern our lives and our lives are filled with choices which shape and give impetus to our lives. Choice to do or not to do is what sets us apart from all the dust and hydrogen that fills our Universe, Choice is our answer to the Universe to which we are insignificant.