It's All About Scale

When Interstellar came out, I saw it in theaters and afterwards cried for 3 hours non stop. I could not figure out why I couldn't stop crying, but a few days afterward, it came to me. The story is about a man who crosses the universe, dimensions, and time to save his daughter. He subsequently saves all of humanity, but really, he did it to save his child. I was crying, because even he, the man who had done all these things, was merely a speck of dust in a universal existence. Unimportant, unremarkable. And if he was that, what did that make me? Someone who thought getting up every morning was difficult. What did that make my friends? My family? Anyone I had ever met?

We were all so small, and I was crying because I knew it, but no one else did.

I was crying because no matter what I or anyone else did, there was no way we were ever going to change that. I was crying because I didn't understand how people could go on living if it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

But a few days ago, I had a conversation with a friend about this. He said that on a Macro scale, no one, not even the earth, really mattered. Perhaps our universe didn't even matter. Perhaps our universe was a speck of dust in a giant's eye that no one gave a crap about. And the cells that make up our bodies are ridiculously small, and they don't matter singularly to us either. But right here, right now, in my scale, I was important to the people around me. They were important to me too, and if I were to perish or they were to perish, there would be lasting effects on those who had been around on my level, who witnessed my existence.

And that made me feel so much better.

-Randa