For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World

by Sasha Sagan

But the big bang may or may not be the beginning of everything. What came before, if anything, remains an unsolved mystery to our species. As we humans learn, create better technology, and produce more brilliant people, we might discover that which we currently think happened is wrong. But somehow, something started us off a very long time ago. In the other direction there will, theoretically, be an infinite amount of time after we’re dead. Not infinite for our planet or our species, but maybe for the universe. Maybe not. We don’t know much about what that will entail except that the star we orbit will eventually burn out. Between those two enormous mysteries, if we’re lucky, we get eighty or one hundred years. The blink of an eye, really, in the grand scheme of things. And yet here we are. Right now. It’s easy to forget how amazing this is. Days and weeks go by and the regularity of existing eclipses the miraculousness of it. But there are certain moments when we manage to be viscerally aware of being alive. Sometimes those are very scary moments, like narrowly avoiding a car accident. Sometimes they are beautiful, like holding your newborn in your arms. And then there are the quiet moments in between, when all the joy and sorrow seem profound only to you.