Perspective

I just finished watching "The Shadow of the Moon", a documentary about the Apollo astronauts. Brilliant film. It got me thinking about this:

This is the famous "Pale Blue Dot" image taken by Voyager 1. The tiny dot in the center is the Earth, from 4 billion miles away.

"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."

-- Carl Sagan
From "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," Random House, 1994

So think about this the next time you're fuming about the price of gas, or the latest celebrity idiocy, or some other trivial issue. And think about how critical this little speck in the darkness is to our survival. This is all there is.