“Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share. Think about the expanse of time and how brief — almost momentary — the part marked for you. Think of the workings of fate and how infinitesimal your role.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.24
It’s easy to feel like what we’re facing is important, or momentous. We often think that the problems facing us are big; or conversely, that we have grand ambitions for ourselves in this world.
But in the grand scheme of things, we’re basically just a blip. In The Daily Stoic today, there are a bunch of figures about science and our universe which illustrate that we are truly just the tiniest, tiniest little piece in the whole of existence. We’re a speck’s speck. We’re smaller than small.
Our problems aren’t big — they just seem that way to us. What we consider important (and our time on Earth) is, by objective measure, infinitesimally small. And the challenges that we face have been tackled before, and they’ll be tackled again by someone in the future, now and forevermore. Everything is repeated in an endless cycle.
So, are we unimportant? Do our lives essentially have no value — do they not matter at all? Of course not. They matter to us. Our lives are important in our little microcosm of the universe.
But just remember how brief your existence is. It gives you perspective when you need it. We’re small fish, in an impossibly big pond.
