“Space, the final frontier” as the famous phrase goes. Although now that I think about it… I tend to disagree. For me.. our imagination is the final frontier. That’s the true infinite.
In that dimension we call our imagination, we can only dream of wars ending, a self-sustaining planet, or a species of humankind that has finally figured out how to stop eating itself. Until those come to pass, for those accomplishments will take all the resources of our collective imagination to make happen, then and only then, can this ‘final frontier’ we call our imagination ever be truly mined and discovered.
In the meantime, all we can do is ponder at what has gone before and what is to come still. One way do that is to step back and consider it from afar.
Barely visible within the vastness of space, Sagan referred to that pixel where all of humanity that has ever existed as ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’
Which is what the astronomer Carl Sagan the astronomer and author did in a very profound way 1990 when he foresaw the profoundness of a photo of our world from far far away in that final frontier we generally think of outer space.
Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977 to study the outer Solar System including fly-bys of Jupiter and Saturn. Having completed the mission for which it had been created in November 1980, the spacecraft was allowed to continue its flight and leave the Solar System.
As a member of the Voyager imaging team , Professor Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 should take a last photograph of Earth before the cameras were deactivated to allow their power to be used for the flight into interstellar space. NASA scientists were concerned that such a photograph, in which the Earth would be relatively close to the sun, could permanently damage Voyager 1’s Imaging Science Subsystem. They consequently held off turning the cameras around until 14 February 1990, by which time the spacecraft was approximately 6 billion kilometres from Earth
Barely visible within the vastness of space, Sagan reflected on the ‘pale blue dot’ at a public lecture at Cornell University and later wrote about it in his book that drew its name from the image.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
Bringing this back down to earth, we can begin to realise that some setbacks we face in our every day lives are really not so big a deal after all. Yes, in THAT moment a problem may feel like the biggest hurdle to overcome. But given time, some reflection and perhaps a wider perspective, we can very often reduce that to a distant memory that we learned from.
That’s how I see every job interview that didn’t go so well, every redundancy I faced, every business I had to close down. All were huge challenges at the time, but those life experiences continue to serve me so well. Those perspectives, reflections, and most importantly, lessons learned are the reason I find so much fulfilment within the current incarnation of my career today.
Take one setback or challenge you are facing today and ask yourself; how will I feel about this in 10 years time? Now ask your self if anyone will worry about it in a thousand, or even a hundred years time. Somehow, I don’t think so. And neither should you.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” | Click on the image above to listen to Carl Sagan’s ‘pale blue dot’