A friend of mine on Facebook made a very understandable observation about how hard the Connecticut shooting makes it to enjoy relatively mundane and insignificant but ordinarily happy events or occasions. From what I can tell about him, he’s a level-headed, clear-eyed individual, not typically given to sentimentality. Nevertheless, this one rattled him. I think it rattled everyone. I mean, a lot of the bad news you hear about you appreciate as negative on an intellectual level. But, a lot of it doesn’t slip through and hit you in the gut.
My response was that we have to try and let it go if we can. Not because of that kind of silly “if we don’t do ‘x,’ the terrorists win’ rationale that was overused after 9/11. But, because, at the end of the day, we’re tiny people on a tiny speck of rock for a comically short period of time in a soul crushingly vast universe. Any realistic perspective on the nature of the universe leads to madness or, at least, incapacitating depression.
So, we have to let our brains work their filters. Hopefully the brain lets enough of the bad stuff through for you to make rational decisions about how to go about your day and your life while letting more of the good stuff through so you can at least enjoy yourself from time to time.
“Any realistic perspective on the nature of the universe leads to madness or, at least, incapacitating depression.” Now that’s a depressing sentence.
I don’t know if it’s depressing.
Understanding the vastness of the universe we live in and how small we are in it doesn’t need to be depressing or maddening.
I can find it to be quite calming, or at least centering.
The incomprehensible nature of the size and age of the universe, and that fact that I have the opportunity to probe it and discover it with my own intellect and senses without the pretense and preconditions of mytholgy, is quite empowering.
Did you mean cosmically? Comically works, too.
Your post reminds me of a passage from Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel”…
“We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space- lost bulb. The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One was a coxcomb not to die in it.”
Yup.