The comment would have been too long and too confused.
Thanks.
My first reaction after reading the commencement address was to think, there must be a rare creature which takes itself more seriously than the human does.
Reading about what's gone by sometimes makes me wish I could visit some places at particular times. This list is so long and so varied that it would be hard to put it down here without being compelled to keep editing this post as long as I'm alive and I keep learning more. If you were given the chance (and if things could be suitably fast-forwarded), wouldn't you love to see the evolutions of some countries? Wouldn't you like to see if our superhuman understanding of the evolution of the world and life actually happened or not? Add to that trajectory people, languages, arts, cultures, behaviours, beliefs... now, come back to the pale blue dot.
I wonder if we've made living life a contraption meant to serve a higher purpose. Living for now has gone somewhere into the future, which is the most exasperatingly abstract thig (yes, thig. The 'n' sound gives the original word substance) that exists. Damn it, does the future exist? You know what I mean. Life seems to be like a flight of stairs, which leads to something bigger, brighter, brighter, like a nib constantly scratching forwards across a page. So much so, that the act of running up those stairs or writing those ideas takes a backseat. Something tells me, unoriginally, that this is the root of all our sorrows.
We have something in our hands that is ours to create, ours to savour, ours to take care of. And when I look at the picture and see how the vastness of space fills up everything, what is made insignificant is not the fact that we exist or have existed for so long, but all the pain, suffering and negativity that we have developed over the course of this existence. There may or may not be a point in our existence; we may or may not be creating a dent in the cosmos because we breathe. But do we need to?
I feel it's wonderful to be here, now. When I saw the picture, I couldn't believe that I was a part of that dot. Somewhere, in a space so microscopically tiny that it wrings my head to imagine, I live on that dot. I'm writing this on that dot. Everyone I know or will ever know, everything that inspires me, everything I want to do, everything I feel passionate about is on that dot. For some reason which I wish not to examine, this thought brought me inexplicable happiness. There are so many beautiful things in this pale blue dot. Butterflies, water-colours, laughter, light and darkness, imagination, water, music, cotton clothes, memories, fresh earth, tears. It's all here, with us, around us. That pale blue dot is not part of a history that I can only imagine visiting. It isn't a forgotten memory or a lost planet. I live it.
This picture fills me with silence, like when I'm watching a gradual transformation or listening to a moving song. Any limitations exist in our mind, not anywhere else.
