Cosmic Pondering

http://nonprophet.typepad.com/nonprophet/2006/12/the_most_import.html
If the link fails, Google "the most important image ever taken."

Go see this video. Just check it out, even if you're not a deep-thinking person. Even if stars, aliens, and planets mean nothing to you. Just have a look and see what we are a part of. When you're done, come back and read the thoughts this video inspired in me, and leave a comment to say what it made you feel.

I was left feeling empty, like my whole heart had been sucked out of my chest. This planet is nothing. I am even more insignificant. My pain means nothing and is of no consequence to anyone or anything. I have thousands of thoughts in my head, and I wish I had someone to share these things with, but it doesn't feel like anyone else really cares, and now I feel like I know why. Why should anyone care that I miss her so much it physically hurts me and makes me want to regress to acts I thought I had left behind completely? Who gives a damn about that when we have so much to think about?

I was going to say that we have so many more important things to think of, but I don't think it's a matter of importance, and I don't think you can really measure the importance of things like this. It's more like... quantity. The possibilities in a universe that's a meaningless 78 billion light-years wide... What's out there? More of us? Other things we can't imagine? Or things we thought we just imagined but really came to this planet in our movies from out of a memory or cosmic knowledge that we don't know we possess.

At the same time, who cares? If there are aliens out there, big deal. Other planets full of beings wondering if there are others out there that are wondering if there are others? So what? What does that even mean in terms of the effect on my life? It means that I lie on a picnic blanket in a park with a friend at midnight and talk about how big the universe is, or that she and I once lay in the back of my old ute listening to metal, watching the night sky, and I saw my first shooting star. Does it even matter what's out there? Until it's in here, does it affect me, or should I even worry whether it affects me or not? Is it ignorant of me not to worry? Should I perhaps think of it like another country? I've never been outside of Australia, and to me, it seems like living somewhere else in the world must feel different. But I also realize that it probably doesn't feel any different for someone in another country to sit down at another computer and type up a blog about a cool video they saw in another language than mine. So if other beings exist on other planets, they probably feel just the same as me. Or maybe not. Maybe they have another level of consciousness that makes their sheer existence inconceivable to me.

I wonder, should I keep worrying about having enough money to travel next year or saving enough money to afford a 4WD, or having enough money to run this fuel-sucking car? And is there any point in worrying about having an apparently meaningless existence where I have no love for anyone, and few people have any love for me, and even then it's not substantial enough for me to actually feel it?

If concern for such trivial things is so pointless, why can't I forget about people I don't want to care about? Is it selfish for me to think things like 'Why aren't I in a relationship?' and to wonder how long I'll have to wait for my next drunken hookup when this small amount of brainpower could go to pondering the galaxy and faraway planets with or without little green men with spaceships instead of cars? Or is it equally pointless and selfish to assume that it matters whether or not I think about how big the universe is?

In essence... Should I keep stressing myself about being happy and successful, or should I give in to the cosmos and just waste my life away wondering about stuff I'll never truly understand? Is surviving even worth it, and what exactly is 'surviving'? Surviving is the basics, I guess: eating, breathing, existing. What about living? Is that being happy? Getting things and doing things? Why do we even bother? We can't change anything, not in the context of this enormous universe. Nothing means anything. Maybe going to work tomorrow to earn a few bucks is pointless. Maybe listening to music that makes me feel healed is a waste. Maybe wondering what's worthwhile and what's not is a waste in itself.

Should I keep writing, or should I decide here that this is a waste? Should I delete what I have typed and forget about it, or should I print it out and stick it on my wall so I read it every day and think about what matters? Try to figure out what matters. What matters to me? Music. Vibrations that reach my ears and my brain converts into sound. How can something I've heard described like a recipe, as if it's nothing, just a process, mean so much to me that I just know I would have bled myself dry long ago if not for the discovery of the lyrics of bands like Bayside, AFI, Atmosphere, Slipknot, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Miles Away, Pearl Jam... The people that wrote those words that I care so much about, and created the music that makes me feel simultaneously balanced and insane... That I care about so much I wish I could turn the words into liquid and drink it until I drown myself in it and never have to be without the words, or better yet, I could distill it into a needle and inject myself with it so it flows in my blood and becomes a part of me... I wish they were more than words; that I could perceive them more deeply than just as words... Maybe I should spend my life listening to all that music that I love so much and see how deeply I can comprehend the words.

Fuck, I started out talking about stars and planets, and here I am now going on about music. I guess that kind of answers my question. Despite everything, one thing matters more to me than anything else, and that is surrounding myself and saturating myself in music. Everything else, to me, is insignificant. It's all something. But in comparison, it's all nothing. I think I'm done now. Hope I didn't keep you from something more important.