While some things are beyond my understanding, like the laws of quantum physics, I know three things to be true: one, banana pancakes are the best when it’s raining outside; two, it’s never a good idea of run from bears … especially mamma bears whose cub just crossed your path; and three, we are nothing. Now when I say this, I don’t literally mean nothing. Rather compared to the world, we are nothing -- actually scratch that, we are less then nothing. We are like that little piece of dust that you don’t brush off because you don’t know it’s there.
I first realized this at the wise old age of 16, while in Vermont. As a sophomore in high school I thought I had all the answers, and I thought I was the best at everything -- including photography, despite having little to no training. So naturally in such a place like Vermont with very little light pollution, I wanted to take a picture of the stars (which are just about the hardest thing in the world to take a picture of). I could not feel my toes and face, but it was when I finally lost feeling in my fingers that I decided to call it quits. When I finally defrosted inside and was able to look at the photos, I was amazed that the only one picture came out descent enough to see the stars, but paled in comparison to the infinities that I saw around me. If a picture is worth a thousand words, it would take more words than exist in the English language to describe how small I felt. You can’t digitize that experience. At that moment I understand how little my life is in comparison.
We are nothing, and I don’t say this to be mean, but rather to put things into perspective. You see comparatively speaking human beings are nothing. There are 600 billion trees in Alaska and only 7.4 billion people in the world. We are just a blip on the timeline of the world, here for a certain period of time, and then gone. Yes we may take up a lot of land, but this is not our world. We must preserve the nature that is around us, for it’s going to be around a lot longer than anything we’ve created. We are really just borrowing the land for a time period. It’s kind of like borrowing a shirt from a friend: you make sure you take extra special care of that shirt because it’s not yours. We need to take special care of the land around us because it’s not ours. We need to recycle, reuse and stop tearing down trees. We need to not drive places, if we can walk. If everyone does a few things everyday, it will go a long way. As individuals we are small in this time scale, but as a collective we are powerful.
Now every time I go to Vermont I stand outside for as long as I can just starting up at the infinities that surround me. I clear my mind, let go of all the material troubles that cloud our world and remember that this world is beautiful but it’s also not mine. We are not lords of this world, so we cannot treat it as such.
