I have been trying to wrap my head around the vastness, and closeness, of the world for a very long time. I've always loved to learn, and nothing was ever uninteresting to me. There is so so much to learn. When I hear of scholars who specialize in extremely specific things, it feels silly, surely there can't be that much to one subject? But there is, there is vast knowledge in every corner you look into, and I am not even really dipping my toes into it at all. I am starring at the water, and taking it in, and all its beauty.
It strikes me all the different things I enjoy - how trivial some of them feel in comparison to others. Music has been enjoyed by humanity since the very beginning, I feel so undoubtedly human with every song I play and new artist I find. I love to discover new artists - I feel overwhelmed sometimes at how much beautiful music there is. My hours spent looking up "(country) classics" "(country) indie" pale in comparison to the millions of hours of music that exist. I think of how nearly every song I hear has touched someone in some deep way I cannot comprehend. When I drive through towns that look like mine, but aren't familiar, I think of how this is the backdrop of someones, some thousand of peoples, daily life, and they know these spots like the back of their hand.
I try to comprehend how huge the world is. In my desperate attempts to learn languages from extremely different parts of the world (Norwegian and Swahili), I discover differences in culture to my own, and to each other. I crave to know the history of every living place. I haven't even a full comprehension of the world's general history - when I catch a glimpse of an extremely localized history, one which can be traced by individual people or events documented in diaries or news entries, I think of what history I've lived through. What I've lived through, and perhaps didn't know would be history yet. All the cultures of the world, they differ in so many ways, but they also don't. I see humanities urge for order, for good food, for good lives, for morals to guide them, for family to care for them, laced in every new fact I learn. If I'm lucky I get to live the facts, I get to experience these very real things that I read about almost like its fiction.
Fiction is a whole other can of worms. I get so invested in fake worlds, and characters, and its all so beautiful to me. To think someone, oftentimes a single person or a small group of people, came up with all of this on their own, as a mixture of their own life, beliefs, desires, and creative urges. It inspires me. I will never stop creating, and I don't think I'm physically capable of stopping. Even art, music, writing, that isn't particularly good, I can't help but think of what they did to get there. Maybe I am seeing the beginnings of someone who will later blossom. Maybe they only do this for fun, as expression, and its to their taste enough to not care if its "bad".
I've always been into media like that, in the way I draw fanart and get really into a character. Its fun - Its weird to me I can find just as much enjoyment from that as learning about the world. I juggle between them, like tonight, as I went from studying Swahili, to drawing furries, to looking at lesbian anime fanart, to reading a book about the history of migration. It is foreign to me when someone can find joy in just one or two of these types of things - People who only play sports, and have no creative hobbies. Or people who have no interest in the academic, and only care about video games or shows. I think there is too much to learn, and emotions to experience, to get fixated on only a few types of ways to exist.
I think of my friends, and the hundreds of people I've known in my lifetime. I often mourn people who I used to be close with, and am not no longer, but I know its not possible to know everyone. I will try my best despite this - I will give my all to everyone I meet, everyone I care for, and I need the people even in the peripheral of my life to know I cherish them deeply. I think of all the people in passing; People whose faces I know from the bus everyday, classmates Ill likely never speak to again now that I've graduated, friends of friends I have only known through stories. People who make my life complete, despite not being close.
To understand the people around me is one of my greatest goals, one I am always working towards. I love to learn the life stories of those around me; People like me, people who aren't. Its refreshing to hear the perspective of someone who's lived such a different life to mine. Different social classes, ethnicities, identities, time periods and ages, goals and aspirations. I can never deny the familiar however - It can be similarly eye-opening to talk with those with similar experiences to me, or other people I've previously met. Its interesting to me how different of starting points can end up in the same places, how many of us live the same types of events. I dare to say we are all more similar than different, at least I feel I am able to get something out of nearly everyone I speak to.
I can't get out of my head the vast number of places I could've winded up. Its a miracle I ended up with the people I did - I am so grateful for all my friends, ex friends, lovers, and ex lovers. Simultaneously, no matter where I ended up, I would've found people I loved. I find love in every place I go, and I could be thousands of miles away, with completely different people, and still be happy. Once again simultaneously, the world seems so small. Some people I think I was fated to meet - we ended up in the same place multiple times, it would've happened eventually. Every so often Ill find out some of my seemingly unrelated friends knew, or know, eachother. I find out I'm related to someone I didn't know, I see someone in a place I didn't know they'd be.
We are so small. I have a limited range of social networks, experiences, places Ill visit, and information I'll learn. It can be daunting to try and take in how large the world is, 8 billion people, and how we are but a speck on the Earth. Concurrently however, our own individual lives are so full. Not a single person is replaceable. I feel my emotions as heavy as the world - I can't minimize them by saying its just a chemical reaction, or that millions of others have gone through this. When you're not fulfilled, whether physically socially or mentally, it'll weigh down on you entirely. To the point perhaps you don't want to exist anymore. Those things hold the weight of the universe in them, no matter how "small" you are over the span of billions of years, or in the history of the Earth, or even just in your town. You deserve to feel, and feel happy, and experience more, and reach for more.
This smallness also brings me to the bigness of the world. I am so fixated on how we are alll systems upon systems built upon each other. Neutrons, to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to tissues, to organs, to body systems, to whole people. Every so often I get very focused on how in the world I can control my body parts. My hands, typing this now, are somehow speaking with the thought process in my mind. How the fuck am I thinking - How can I share anything at all? How is language real? Why do differently shaped molecules form hormones and chemicals that result in such drastic effects? How does sickness, how do drugs, impact the body so heavily? How, how, how. Its so small - there are things even smaller than me. I wish I could speak with every individual bacteria living in me, all my cells, all the tiny organisms and bugs within me. I want to tell them I love them and appreciate them for holding me together.
Yet I, this small unit, also get to contribute to the bigger picture. I am an amalgamation of everyone who came before me. My house is built of inventions from people innovating in their age, all over the world, whos work got put together to create the modern infrastructure. Its weird to think how quickly our standards of livings have changed. My idea of modern life is different to someone 100 years ago, and completely foreign to someone 500 years ago. This life on Earth, it exists in this vast vast universe. We're in a solar system, which is one of millions in a galaxy, and theres galaxy clusters, and then those clusters form clusters, and those clustered clusters make bigger clusters. Trillions of stars, trillions of suns, trillions of planets, trillions of floating debris.
I do think there has to be life somewhere else, with how massive everything is. I feel its so massive that it'd be a fluke if we could ever meet each other, which then makes me think it'd be a fluke if there wasn't sometime somewhere where 2 forms of life did manage to be close enough to meet. I have this mindset, which I know is false but that which I can't shake, that everything has been done or said. When I say a strange sentence, I think, surely someone has said something like this before. Theres someone out there with my exact opinions or appearance. Or there was, sometime in the thousands of years humans have existed. I think of how I'd have formed differently in a different country, with different parents, if I were richer, if I was born earlier or later.
I cannot afford to be sad, and neither can you. There are too many things to see and to learn. There is so much history everywhere I look. There is art and inspiration for more in every glance I take. I cannot stop for a second, although I will, to catch my breath. I need to keep moving and so do you. We need to keep creating, and we cannot dwell on whats holding us back. Or we can, sometimes we need to, but I need you to keep going forward. I need you to see the beauty in this world, and I need you to help create more of it. It won't be easy and you will succumb to the dread of the world sometimes, but there is too much beauty for it to be over in an instant. There are friends to meet, and music to make, and drawings to draw, and languages to learn, and games to play, and places to visit, and pets to cherish, and new chapters to be opened. Its all so beautiful, really.