“It’s like waking up from a dream in which things now make sense.”
I’m sure everyone has at least one time in their life where they experienced a revelation; they received information that changed their view point on a specific topic or on life as a whole. Mine occurred at the age of 14. It was as if up until that age my life was a huge, jumbled up jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit together.
I was struggling through my early teens, experiencing situations and feeling things that I’d never of believed I would. Exams and relationships, if they went wrong it was most definitely the end of the world in my eyes. There were no answers to any of my questions, and life was.. well, confusing to a point of insanity.
I became curious about the cosmos, and at night I would study online college lectures on astronomy. My friends rolled their eyes at me when I tried to explain the wonder I felt while learning all of these new facts. They thought it was just another weird phase I was going through, but I really wanted to pursue a career in astronomy.
When the time came in school where I had to make a decision on the subjects I would continue with for my last few years, I couldn’t keep physics. I didn’t have the maths skills required. So that meant my dream of being an astronomer went out the window. However, the one thing I got out of my brief obsession was that I came across a YouTube video – ‘Shock and Awe – A Former Christian Ponders the Cosmos’.
The name of the video might put you off, but the video isn’t about believing in God or not believing. At the age of 14 I was in-between. I was raised to believe there was a God that created all beings, the Earth, the sun, the moon and the stars. There was no mention of all of the other billion planets (Oh and the stars were only made so we on earth could tell what season it was…). Studying the cosmos helped the pieces in the puzzle that was my life to slowly start to drift together. Doubt was placed in my mind and I had hundreds of questions that I refused to be answered with well, “God only knows!” However, when I watched the video I mentioned above, that is when all of the pieces fell perfectly into place.
A man- he doesn’t give his name in the video, so let’s just call him Steve- struggles with the reason as to why he feels greater awe and wonder after removing a powerful being from his life than he might by adding one.
“The awe we now feel is far greater, far more wondrous, and euphoric than anything we’ve ever felt before. The universe religion offered always seemed so packed and human in scale. In order to remove that perspective, means letting go of the idea that the universe is all about us, and it’s exciting to think that given enough time and resources all the questions we’ve ever wondered can be answered. This is far more compelling than, God only knows!”
Steve asks his friends who also recently left the Christian faith and they all feel the same way. It was his Christian friend who disagrees with him that ended up answering his question.
He said, “You absolutely should feel more awe and wonder if you have come to the conclusion that matter came from nothing, life from non-life, and intelligence from non-intelligence, all those things would be truly mind blowing without god…”
Only now do I realise that I felt the exact same way as Steve before watching the video. Yet I, like Steve, was struggling to be able to put these feelings into words. My eyes were finally open all the way. The universe, even though I’d been living in it for 14 years at that point, it was a place I could finally try and understand.
“I’m glad to count myself as those who no longer think they have all the answers, but those who are searching for more.”
The importance of the situations around me shifted. Knowing how lucky I am to be on this planet changed how I view events in my life. The little things that meant the world to me before simply didn’t matter much at all. Everything was put into perspective. We are all here together on a pale blue dot on a journey around our sun in our milky way.
“And now, I understand my existence occupies only a blink of an eye in cosmic time. I’ll hopefully live 80 or 90 years then my consciousness will cease and my atoms will return to where they came from. Knowing that my time is limited I can finally appreciate how truly lucky I am.”
Only twice so far in my life has my perspective shifted to such an extent. Once while watching this video. The second time was when my friend died due to an accident that could have occurred to anyone. This also makes me realise that our time is limited and that it’s important to make the most of every second. Getting up for college and work on a Monday morning, it’s not something we look forward to. Although, if you think about the bigger picture, we are lucky we even woke up today at all.
“Man is not the centre of all things; life is not all about you. I am in the grand scheme of things utterly and absolutely insignificant. And yet, because my planet is the only one in which we are sure of there being life that makes me and my fellow human beings precious.”
When looking up at the night sky and realising the immensity of the universe around us, some might feel small and insignificant. I don’t. I feel connected and I feel big. The fact that my atoms came from those stars, that’s enough for me to feel connected. We can look up and see that yes we are in this universe, but more importantly the universe is in us. That’s the level of connectivity that everyone aims for in life. We all want to feel relevant and be a participant. That’s exactly what we are just by being alive. That’s what I struggled to understand before this revelation. Afterwards, even though none of my questions were answered, I knew that they could be, and that was more than enough for me.
“That I, a conformation of star dust, am aware enough that I can contemplate the universe in which I came? That is enough, truly enough.”
LAURA CONNOLLY JOURNALISM 