by Carol Roper

In recent months I’ve enjoyed a personal peace new to me. At first, I felt guilty for not doing something productive: watering the garden plants, walking the dog, writing a story, answering email or checking social media. But then, I decided to allow my idleness and see where it led. Busy thoughts occasionally jolted me out of my mellowness: Did I remember to pay the electric bill? Yes, of course. I pay bills often the same day I find them folded and stuck between the decorative bars of the front gate. Where I live in Mexico, monthly bills are delivered by hand, announced by barking from every dog on the street, “Stranger, Stranger.”

My doubt subside and, in their place, a sweet nothingness.

This mood, or whatever it is, has been with me ever since I viewed a photo of the universe on a TV segment. Actually, it was a photo of a very small section of the ever-expanding universe where the planet earth spins in the Milky Way Galaxy among trillions of others galaxies in a multi-universe of planets. The enormity of this reality of infinity is so disconcerting to humans that we have narrowed life into smaller more digestible pieces for the human psyche to digest. Such as our lives have a purpose and that is to produce results, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a medicine that eliminates a disease or a missile that eliminates a population, as long as it’s marketable.

We are taught that humans are superior. In the chain of evolution, we’re top of the food chain. Ingrained in all, but a few of us, is the concept that we are topmost important creatures on the planet. And that we have a purpose in life beyond survival.

Those of us living in a western society are taught as soon as possible that we must strive to improve our imperfect selves and teach the same to others, while subjugating lower animals to our needs and wants.

Even before I could speak to express myself, I understood from the sounds and facial expressions of those around me that I was very imperfect. I stained myself with feces and urine,had to be cleaned many times a day and night, disturbing sleep of the adults. I needed to be carried until my legs grew strong enough and I learned how to stand. I had to be hand fed by others. My humanness was imperfect. I must strive to be perfect and most importantly, not have a human odor.

When I met the standards set for me, I was rewarded with smiles, pleasant sounds, embraces. Month by year, I learned to strive and struggle and do my best for others approval. As we all do, or don’t at great risk, for survival.

We humans, as far as is known, are the only conscious creatures with a verbal language that reads and writes. And do that while only use ten percent of our brains. (Dolphins of the sea use twenty percent of their brains.)

Included with the photo of the ever expanding universe on television, was a talk by an engaging physicist. (So as not to distract his name is at the end of this piece). He spoke in relatable ways that what was shown in the photo was a small piece of the cosmos. That realization somehow caused a a kind of epiphany in me, a moment of illumination. I felt a nameless burden I’d carried for years in my unconscious, evaporated. Peacefulness embraced me. For weeks I’ve been able to enjoy glancing out a window at a passing cloud, sitting in the garden for a morning coffee, my mind free. Not longing for anything, grateful for a healthy mobile body and life in a country not at war, food in the fridge, a reliable vehicle, a snarky dog.

All is well in my world, for now. And on a clear night I can stand on the deck and see the twinkling glow from supernovas that happened in faraway galaxies of the ever-expanding multi-universe now visible from the planet humans call earth.

BLOG by  Carol Roper

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Physicist: Brian Cox, PhD, leading particle physicist and professor at the University of Manchester, as well as a researcher on one of the most ambitious experiments on Earth, the ATLAS experiment on the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.  He was also the keyboard player in the UK pop band D: Ream.