The Vastness Within

Did you know on New Year’s Day

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft

passed an object 4 Billion miles

away from Earth? That’s beyond

Pluto and into the Kuiper Belt.

Only the Voyager Missions have

traveled further out beyond our

Solar system. Voyager One being

over 13 Billion Miles and Voyager

Two being over 11 Billion Miles,

into “interstellar Space”.

Both Voyagers have been out there

in space for 41 years. New Horizons

has been travelling since 2006 to make

it four billion miles away. It’s amazing

to me that human beings have done

this.

As these travelling vessels of our

collective ingenuity hurtle through

space; I am awed. Awed that when these

small satellites look back, Earth is just

another micro dot against the black.

We are insignificant, yet; it is only

a temporary insignificance. It seems

to me that our self-imposed importance

should be cast aside for the greater good,

for the opportunity to live in a New Era.

Sure, I’m one guy on a small planet in the

Milky Way. I’ll never live on the Moon or

make flapjacks on Mars. I’ll never experience

true weightlessness. I am bound to this

Planet and it’s destiny.

It is in my tethered nature that I aspire

to inspire, to love, to live, to hope, to spend the

New Year exploring the uncharted depths

of my humanity, my capacity for honesty,

integrity and living a decent life.     

It is the same hope that got

those space vessels into the air,

the same hope that keeps them

working, the same hope that I

want to cherish, honor and share.

In mine, and your explorations.