Amidst the papers, the tests, the problem sets, the internship search and the obsession with crafting a better future, we often forget about the big picture. Of course, family and friends matter the most in this world, but I am talking about an even bigger picture, I’m talking about your story, your cosmic story.
It is commonplace, especially at a fantastic school like Bowdoin, to believe that you are somehow special. This is true to some extent, but I want to challenge this belief. I want to challenge it at its very core until you realize that you are not special, at least not in the way you think. More importantly, I want to show you that you are part of something that defines the notion of grandeur, which is the fact that you are intimately connected to the universe and all of its history.
Once upon a time (well, sort of, since time as we know it began at the Big Bang), there was an explosion of energy on a scale inconceivable to even our wildest imaginations. Don’t you remember it? You were there. I was there. The energy and matter that comprises everything you see, everyone you love, everyone you have ever heard of, everything you will come into contact with and every living being and object across the universe was there. This is where all of us and everything around us first originated.
Fast forward about one second and the particles that you are made up of form (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.). Fast forward about half a million years and incredible amounts of hydrogen and helium form, but not our good friend carbon yet. It will take immensely high temperatures and high pressures to create the atoms that you are comprised of.
Luckily, the force of gravity is on your side. Fast forward to the formation of stars. A long time ago in a place far, far away there was a star. This star is one among many, but this star is of particular importance to you.
This star is a natural nuclear fusion reactor that “cooks” the heavier elements essential to life (such as our good friend carbon) until the forces become too great for the star to survive, resulting in a cataclysmic explosion that launches these elements vast distances into the void of deep space, creating breathtaking spectacles such as the Crab Nebula (please look it up if you haven’t). Supernovas are some of the brightest spectacles in the universe, rivaling the brightness of entire galaxies (with hundreds of billions of stars). The carbon atoms you are made of came from one of these spectacles; without supernovas, life as we know it (including you) would not exist.
Fast forward to an average-sized galaxy, one that you would not think much of given that there are billions of galaxies like this one. But look closer to a forgotten neighborhood on the outskirts of this galaxy. This is our solar system. Our Sun formed just like the billions of stars around us and through the course of time it accumulated the planets that we all know and love today. Among these planets is one that just happened to be not too cold, not too hot, but just right. This is our only home. This is Earth. Out of pure chemistry, life emerged. These little creatures were unimpressive, but also resilient. These are your earliest ancestors. It will take billions of years for multicellular life to evolve, but soon after multicellular life evolves, another explosion occurs: the Cambrian explosion. This explosion of life would lead to the evolution of mammals, our primate kin and eventually us, Homo sapiens.
If we map the cosmic history of the universe onto a year’s calendar in which the Big Bang was January 1 at midnight and the current moment is December 31 at midnight, all of human history has lasted about 15 seconds. Your life will last less than a second. Your cosmic journey is in its last sentence with your grandparents, your parents and finally you.
Against all odds, you are here, conscious and reading scribbles on a refined piece of a tree, but understanding these scribbles. Among all the matter and energy around you, only you can question, only you can comprehend, only you can notice the beauty of the universe. Talk about privilege. And so here your cosmic story ends in this current moment, with you wrestling with your everyday human worries. What will you do next? What will you make of it?
Once this cosmic perspective sinks in, it is impossible not to take a step back and ask questions. Why do we fight so much? Why do we cause so much destruction? Why are we treating the Earth, our only home, so poorly?
I often wonder—if everyone were reminded of this cosmic perspective—whether we would have borders, whether we would have wars, whether we would treat the Earth differently, whether we would treat our animal kin differently, whether I would end that stupid fight with my parents, whether I would smile at every chance I get or whether I would appreciate more everyone and everything around me.
Amongst billions of galaxies and billions of stars and billions of organisms, we exist here on Earth indistinguishable from the rest. However, in the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson, “We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.” And don’t you ever forget it.