I know, for example, that the atoms that make up my fragile biological form, have been rattling about at the bottom of Earth's gravity well for the better part of 4.5 billion years. Atoms in my body now have been part of Voltaire, Shakespeare, da Vinci, and yes, even Hitler and Ghengis Khan.
I know I am not a static thing. Constantly, atoms enter me from the ecology outside. Constantly, atoms return to that same ecology. I am forever changing. I am a pattern with continuity in time. And not even the pattern is constant.
It is beautiful to think that one day, billions of years hence, this world will likely be obliterated in the nuclear fire of an expanding star. At that instant, all those atoms which have been bottled up for so many thousands of millenia, will finally be released, retracing the steps of the journey they once took before.
I am glad I know these things, because I know how painfully easy it would be for me to have, by accident of birth, be born into a culture which was unaware of them. I would have gone my whole life unaware of the miracle of the stars.
I like to think that I would still have yearned for them.
It pains me, deep in my chest, to think that I am constantly surrounded by people who could easily access this information if they wished, and let these sublime truths fill them, but they choose not to. They choose not to. They find the study of the world we live in distasteful.
I go to college at the moment. I would dearly love to make them listen to ten minutes of Carl Sagan rather than another derivative rendition of 'Journey'.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: "I know that the atoms in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people in the street and say ' have you heard this?'"
Exactly.
I console myself by understanding that regardless of what could have happened, I do know these things. It's my goal to help other people know them too.
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