Perspective.
December 31, 2022
Today’s newsletter is being sent so all readers can share their year-end thoughts in the Comments section. As always, please be respectful and “like” worthy comments to flag them for other readers.
I will avoid the temptation to comment on news of the day that will still be current on Monday. Instead, I will share with readers a “timeline” that I frequently discussed with my three daughters as they navigated the challenges of growing up in a stressful world. It is a timeline I carry in my head and review as I write about seemingly urgent events that can benefit from a sense of perspective.
As we enter another challenging year, we will be better off if we try to maintain perspective. It won’t make our problems any easier to solve, but it may help us endure difficult times long enough to outlast them. In life, that is sometimes all it takes to prevail. Not always, but sometimes. So, let’s keep our feet planted on the ground but never lose sight of the fact that we are blessed to be participants in a vast cosmic drama that stretches far behind and ahead of us.
13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang. Our universe inflates from an infinitely dense singularity to its present mass and energy in a timescale measured in Planck Time (10^(-43) seconds).
4.5 billion years ago. Earth forms in the early solar system.
3.7 billion years ago. Life emerges on Earth.
230 million years ago. Age of dinosaurs begins.
65 million years ago. Dinosaur extinction event.
6 million years ago. Hominids emerge.
200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Homo sapiens emerge.
11,700 years ago. Last ice age ends; glaciers retreat from Northern Hemisphere.
10,000 years ago. Agriculture begins.
5,500 years ago. First civilizations emerge.
4,700 years ago. Construction of pyramids begins.
753 BCE. Rome founded.
476 CE. Western Roman Empire falls.
1453 CE. Eastern Roman Empire falls.
1776 CE. American Revolutionary War.
1789 CE. US Constitution enacted.
1969 CE. Humans walk on the moon.
Concluding Thoughts.
I close with two thoughts.
First, the above timescale should never be used to suggest that “nothing matters” because we exist only for a brief moment in an unimaginably vast landscape of space and time. Rather, our presence in that unimaginably vast landscape should be a constant reminder of how truly fortunate we are to exist at this moment and in this place.
Second, life is astonishingly rare. So far as we know, it exists in only one place in the universe—on Earth. Even more astonishingly, life appears to have emerged only once on Earth. All life on Earth is based on the DNA molecule. If some other form of life emerged in the past, it did not survive (so far as we know).
Based on the fact that life emerged only once on Earth, the following must be true: From the moment that the first cell twitched to life 3.7 billion years ago, every one of your ancestors over the course of billions of years had to survive and reproduce in order for you to be here today. It could have been otherwise—a meteor impact, a famine, a war, an epidemic, or a freezing snowstorm could have cut short the 3.7-billion-year chain of life that brought you to this moment. Trillions upon trillions of competing chains of life perished along the way. Yours did not.
Do not take that good fortune for granted. Against infinitesimally small odds, you stand at the pinnacle of 3.7 billion years of evolution. That fact should liberate and embolden you to dare mighty things. The universe labored for 13.7 billion years to bring you to this moment. What are you waiting for?
My Managing Editor and I wish you peace and blessings in the new year!
Talk to you on Monday!
A quick note about the dating of events in the newsletter and other references to events in the evolution of life, the universe, and everything. For brevity, I did not include many important nuances or explain that some dates and events (like The Big Bang) are the subject of ongoing scientific debate and inquiry. And the universe may be teeming with life; we just haven't found it (yet). (But the Fermi Paradox must be considered.) The existence of RNA viruses suggest that that there may have been an RNA life form that lives on in DNA-based molecules. Etc. I am happy to have readers provide detail and nuance that I did not include because of my effort to be brief, but I would be disappointed if anyone felt I was being superficial or sloppy. I tried otherwise.
As noted below, many readers comment that "civilization" began earlier than 3,500 BCE, the emergence of the Mesopotamian cities. Drawing that line is difficult and definitional.
A perfect piece to end 2022, Robert. Thank you. The photos from the James Webb Space Telescope also put things in perspective. One of the newer Webb photos shows a cartwheel galaxy, which the BBC says has a diameter of about 145,000 light years. 1 light year equals 5.88 trillion miles, so the diameter of this cartwheel galaxy is 85,260,000 trillion miles. We humans might not matter to the universe, but it's sobering to remember that we matter to each other. Dignity, courtesy, respect, kindness.