My Perspective on Everything We See and Interpret

Life, what a strange phenomenon. Everything we are, everything that lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, moves, survives, reproduces, thinks, and makes decisions all originate from one spark, one shard of an event that happened by chance and created life and passes down to the next organism connecting everything that lives, has lived, or ever will live.

If a single molecule were to be out of place during this random event no form of life would exist, whether or not life originated on Earth or came from some organism stuck to the side of an asteroid. No matter our origin, an entire and independent evolutionary timeline exists and continues to exist on this rock we call our home as we ultimately hurdle through space constantly revolving around a burning sphere of hydrogen gas we call our sun, which provides all energy for life on Earth, and in turn revolves around the center of the Milky Way which spirals out into the black nothingness that is the vacuum that holds everything that is, was, or will ever be.

Yes, it is very strange that in a reality where there are more stars in our galaxy and more galaxies in the universe than grains of sand in our entire world, that on one planet exists living beings capable of conscious thought and communication and collaboration and community. Yet, when compared to the size of the observable universe, this impossibly small pebble is still an incredibly vast and detailed world where a person can eat in a restaurant everyday of their life and still never be able to eat at every restaurant in New York City.

Perspective is a funny thing as everyone’s perspective about literally everything is different because of interpretation. No matter what you see, feel, hear, taste, smell, think, say, write, or do, every person in this world will have a different perspective simply due to the fact our brain has to interpret and bring to us consciously its interpretation in a process we do not fully understand. It’s kind of funny how the brain does not even understand itself yet, but that is beside my point, which is: it’s a very lonely and incredible feeling knowing that everything you know and everything that is you, no one else can fully understand because they are not you. But that does not mean it is not worth trying to fully understand those around you. That is the beauty of life, the very perspective of everyone else is worth a lifetime's attempt at understanding.

I believe that there is a beauty to be found in everything no matter what it is, because when you change scales, or rather perspectives, it can become something completely different. For this reason I am incredibly envious of the mantis shrimp which possesses in its eyes sixteen different types of rod cells where humans have a mere three. So where we see a seven color rainbow, we cannot even begin to comprehend the explosion of beauty and colors that a mantis shrimp would see, not only in rainbows, but in everything. We literally have no way to imagine it as we only see in all shades of red, green, or blue. It kind of pisses me off a little.