Infinite Space

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"i need no inspiration other then nature's. she has never failed me. she mystifies me, bewilders me, sends me into ecstasies. besides god's handiwork, does not man's fade into insignificance?"

-Gandhi

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the picture above is one of the few things i have seen shown in photographically that has changed me in some way. it's actually more than one photo, taken by hubble, it's of different regions of the "space sky" that have been put together into one large, cohesive, image.

over 3,000 objects, and scientists believe that most are entire galaxies, with planets, suns, comets, everything that that word "galaxy" evokes is in that image.

think about it, it's almost a picture of infinity. of the abyss. the possiblilties of that image are impossible to comprehend.

the picture changed my life. truly.

it makes me think, everytime i see it, just how insignifigant we are. yet at the same time it drives me to understand myself, my surroundings, more than before.

it's almost spiritual, almost religious.

i look at that picture, and, to me, it drives me to learn more. to understand everything just a little more than i do now.

it also makes me ponder my own spirtituality... or at least it makes me understand why people strive to keep faith in god, or whatever higher power they believe in a little more. i see why people want to understand, or believe, that they have a place to go after death because the image is a fearful one on two ends.

on one end, again, the image is the closest we have yet to come in showing the infinite. when i, when anyone, sees the image, they have to think that dieing is a tragedy when we know that there is so much more to see.

so much more that we can't comprehend.

yet on the otherhand, some religions believe their version of hell is infinite. is just blackness. nothingness.

and while this image is the opposite of nothingness, everytime i see it, i almost get lost in what i can't see. there are so many points of light, that really, i can't wrap my mind around the possibilites of what they are. and getting lost in something like that is a terrible why to imagine nothing.

to image nothing as being everything is terrible.

i love this photograph. i love what it shows, what it leaves to the imagination, and most of all i love how it makes me think. how it makes me wonder just how much we don't know.

how small we each are, and how perfect nature (for lack of a better term) is to us.

it just humbles me, it makes me see that humans are NOT some god at the center of the universe.

no, it makes me understand that we are on the outside of the outside, looking into windows of the universe's soul.

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"two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity... and i'm not sure about the universe"

-albert einstein

"if the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe, and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was the dark. dark would be without meaning"

-c.s. lewis

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time: 14:28

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note: no second viewing of up today. probably tuesday.