The Other Expanding Universe.

 

If the meaning of my existence is scaled to the creations of my ego, then the size of the universe renders my existence meaningless. My ego can never manufacture anything to matter on that scale. If I think only of myself, there is no difference in the meaning of my life than if the universe was 92 billion light years across, or the size of a shopping mall. In either case I would be inwardly focused, isolated and irrelevant. 

But what is the true universe of our existence? It is our living consciousness, vast in potential of awareness, yet limited in duration and perception. Born into an experience of being that can flow from curiosity to boredom to hopelessness to joy and swirl back to touch on all of these throughout our lives, until we die. The only universe we will every truly experience is the awareness of our own being and how it touches upon other living things during our lives. The vast scope of the cosmos, both the great beauty of the micro and macro world inspire wonder, that rare experience that can serve to expand our sense of self beyond our skin and thus see this great universe, not as a vast “other” but part and extension of who we are. So what will we choose our universe to be? I choose an expanding universe, where my happiness and worth are not just me, a circle drawn around an insignificant ego, but a “me” that reaches out with expressions of art and actions of kindness and compassion to include the people I love, the others I hope to have a better life, the living creatures who share this moment, and the future lives who will be touched, even if ever so lightly, by the expanding, faint ripples of my having been.