It seems, at times, that I might have an extraordinarily limited perspective of the universe. Considering for a moment the magnitude of shit that exists out there that we will never experience (and could never even imagine experiencing), it seems to dwarf the infinitesimal sliver of existence for which I am an observer.

For example, imagine a perspective where a lifetime is measured not in tens of years, but in billions of years, and traversing across galaxies is as easy as going from city to city for us. You could see the life cycles of stars, the formation of new planets, life, evolution... and truly appreciate the vastness of the universe. We, on the other hand, exist for such a vanishingly small amount of time on such a small little chunk of the universe.

It's also limiting that we are experiencing time in a one-dimensional, collapsed manner. The past is continually fleeing from us and the future is nebulous... but that could easily just be our perception.

It's like we're stuck on a train, with only a rear window, traveling at a constant speed forever. We can always look back and see from where we came, but we have no idea how the track turns up ahead, or even if it will be running for much longer. How ignorant must we look to an observer who can see the track in its entirety? To something not bound by our limited perception of time, its idea of the universe would be quite different than ours.

But maybe it's good that we suffer this "limited perspective" of ours. When you're only around for less than a century, the only appreciable wonder we can experience in the universe is each other. The Earth, the stars, space, and time are not going to give a damn about what you or I do with the rest of our lives, but the people around us will.

Friends will come and go, love, hate, death... all complex and powerful forces that we, in our limited perspective, can nearly get a hold of and experience them as they change and evolve throughout our lives. Could somebody who can skip around galaxies on a whim really appreciate something as delicate and fragile as love?

So maybe we don't have that limited of a perspective after all? Maybe the most impressive things to witness in the universe are the relationships and emotions we experience with others happening right here on this frail little blue marble spinning around one lonely little star...