Humility from Hubble

Meditations upon and IMAX screening of "Hubble 3D":
Today I saw past the white clouds
I saw past the blue sky,
Past the formidable glow that cocoons the earth.
I witnessed the black airlessness that encapsulates our biosphere
And the paradoxical significant insignificance there within.


I swam amongst the stars for a brief moment of time
Breathlessly witnessing the birth, death and rebirth of cosmic motion.
The artistry with which the universe and all of its phenomena come in and out of being,
The seemingly fragile components that create such portentous events,
Equally beautiful and ominous.


Such abstraction humbles like no other.
I am left in wonder, in awe of creation,
Yet confounded by our willful disconnect to such splendour,
Fed by an anthropocentric understanding of existence.
Today I saw the being of nothingness and the nothingness of being.

Postulations and Expectations

As the disillusionment of youth and the fuzzy warmth of the protective family wears away I begin to wonder what is left of the understanding I had of my earlier days. I find myself hurt most by the realization that my expectations of this world, of humanity, are far too lofty. But how, then, do I begin anew, disregarding all these notions that linger in the locked cupboards and drawers of my mind and heart? Can I save myself from the heartbreak I endure as the film playing in my head depicting the wonders of our human potential runs parallel to the cold, demarcating reality I perceive?
One can hope that with time the imbalance of expectation and reality will slowly level, like a falling leaf that floats undecidedly to the left and to the right, arresting the progress of its motion only as it touches the ground. It is my duty to seek the ground, permeating the hot air of my conjectures and touch that which is.
I concede that the search for what is and what ought to be are easily mistaken and are often entangled, perhaps two sides of the same coin, but what can one expect from the abstraction and extraction of a mere human mind?

Modesty

As naturally self interested beings I understand our tendency toward egoism, but to what end? There must be a point in which a rational individual, and rationality is something we are all endowed with, believe it or not, can recognize the self destructive nature of such unsavoury characteristics as arrogance, for example, or conceitedness. We are all granted a certain amount of self-satisfaction, but we must be modest, however trying it may be to find that balance. It is painful to surround oneself with such individuals for they have not yet realized their utter minuteness within the grand cosmological schema. The self-righteousness of the educated for their own sake is something I find detestable, but also sobering to the individual who is willing to concede that, upon comparison of character, will choose never to be as such. The difficulty therein lies with bursting such an individual's bubble, so to speak, whilst remaining unimpassioned and ensuring the individual's dignity is still intact. Nevertheless, I believe this to be a noble endeavour, and one executed with the utmost respect for and in the interest of one's fellow man. 

Daydreaming During Moral Philosophy Class

Something I wrote during class as I pondered deontological moral theory:

Hinging and Binging

Leading to extreme

Existence becomes mired in the corporeal

A jail for the mind

Save me from my desires and passions

For they do not set me free

They lock doors to the truth of being

A truth found in discomfort

The present moment becomes that which we escape

Swimming in the warmth of the nostalgic past

Sprinting into the anxious realm of the unknowable future

Running from me

But where else does one go

For the present is all I have

Hopping on the WWW Train

It is about time I gave this a shot, this new medium for creativity and expression, but I shall not put my pen to rest just yet.