Imagine you look into the mirrow and you could see past the momentary You of today. Imagine you could see back to the You of years ago, the child you once were, the toddler.
Send your consciousness backward through time, at lightning speed, past your parents, past your grandparents, down past all the generations before them. Your ancestors, your primate ancestors, back past all the animals before them, down to the earliest life, into the first cell, then down into that cell, to the complex chemicals that made it possible. And down into the molten earth and the forming solar system, back to the birth of your carbon and oxygen, and iron atoms in exploding stars far across the galaxy. Look back through the universal expansion, to the creation of the elementary particles that you are made of at this very moment, in the Big Bang.
This is not fantasy. This is science. We are all this. We are is the sum total of our history.
How far back we understand that history and how much of our identity we claim is up to us.
No one had this choice before. Our generation is the first, because we are the first to know our real (scientifically proven) origin story.
People don't change from learning facts. People change from discovering a big new identity that is available to them, that is meaningful, exiting and that connects them to people they want to be part of. Under these circumstances people can actually change very quickly.
Our species is central to the cosmos and central to the future of earth and those of us who are alive today, at that pivotal moment, may be the most significant generations ever.
If we could simply live up to this identity, we would transform the world.
(Nancy Ellen Abrams)
No comments:
Post a Comment