Day 560 - Overview effect - https://golifelog.com/posts/overview-effect-1657754452990
NASA just released the [first images](https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/gallery) from the James Webb Space Telescope, our latest, newest, upgraded space camera after Hubble. And man did it not disappoint.
Here's an image of the "Cosmic Cliffs" in the Carina Nebula, located 7600 light-years away:
What a show-stopper of an image! 🤩🤩🤩
And the more I stare at this and ponder the implications, the more all my teeny weeny day-to-day worries melt away.
We're so infinitesimally small in something so infinitely vast.
People talk about leaving behind a legacy, but seriously...
Who will remember us when our Sun blows up?
Who even knows about us in this vast Universe?
Does anything *really* matter?
All is but an almost non-existent blimp in the infinite space-time of the Universe.
And instead of finding this nihilistic and depressing, I find this perspective, this overview effect, a relief. A cathartic release, almost.
It's like a creator realising that nobody cares about what you did or wrote today. You can see it as:
"Yaaay nobody cares! 🤸♂️ I'm free to experiment and do whatever I want!"
or
"Urgh nobody cares. 😭 This sucks, I suck."
I'm going for the former.
We're tiny. Nobody cares.
So now I can attribute and truly take ownership of my own meaning, take my own care, just for my own time, my own life, in my tiny speck of space within this vast cosmos.
It doesn't matter, so that it can now matter.
Here's an image of the "Cosmic Cliffs" in the Carina Nebula, located 7600 light-years away:
What a show-stopper of an image! 🤩🤩🤩
And the more I stare at this and ponder the implications, the more all my teeny weeny day-to-day worries melt away.
We're so infinitesimally small in something so infinitely vast.
People talk about leaving behind a legacy, but seriously...
Who will remember us when our Sun blows up?
Who even knows about us in this vast Universe?
Does anything *really* matter?
All is but an almost non-existent blimp in the infinite space-time of the Universe.
And instead of finding this nihilistic and depressing, I find this perspective, this overview effect, a relief. A cathartic release, almost.
It's like a creator realising that nobody cares about what you did or wrote today. You can see it as:
"Yaaay nobody cares! 🤸♂️ I'm free to experiment and do whatever I want!"
or
"Urgh nobody cares. 😭 This sucks, I suck."
I'm going for the former.
We're tiny. Nobody cares.
So now I can attribute and truly take ownership of my own meaning, take my own care, just for my own time, my own life, in my tiny speck of space within this vast cosmos.
It doesn't matter, so that it can now matter.