Dear Riley,

This is one of my favorite excerpts. It was written by astrophysicist and science advocate Carl Sagan. Reading it reminds me of how insignificant we are compared to the grandness of the universe. It really puts the ups and downs of our daily lives into perspective.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Carl Sagan wrote that excerpt in reference to the photo taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990 (posted above). The probe was launched from Earth in 1977, and after finishing its primary mission, took a picture of Earth on Valentines day 1990. From 6 BILLION kilometers away! No human made object has traveled further from Earth. At 18 billion km away now, it has already left our solar system, and is still traveling away at 38,200 mph. Voyager 1 also carries a message from Earth in case any aliens come across the spacecraft. All pretty amazing right?

So Riley, I hope you find this inspiring as I do. Perhaps you will also look to this excerpt and find some perspective on life.

Love,
Dad
7/12/17

This morning you totally freaked me out. It all started earlier this week, when you were stomping around our bedroom before mom and I got out of bed. As you were walking towards the bathroom, you stopped in front of mom’s closet and got startled. I asked you what was wrong, and you ran over saying that you were scared. I asked you what you were scared of, and you said “the grandma in black, with the pointy shoes and dirty eye”. This kind of weirded us out! Fast forward to this morning. The two of us were alone downstairs eating breakfast. You pretended to feed your baby a spoonful of avocado, then did the same to me. But then, you pretended to feed somebody next to me. I looked back and nobody was there, so I asked you who you were feeding. You said “The grandma in black.” AHHHHHHH. Turns out grandma gave you an old Hansel and Gretel book, and there was a scary witch in it. But still.. creepy!