I’ve been geeking out a bit, looking into quantum mechanics, space, and time. Admittedly, I don’t have a very strong physics background and so my understanding is limited. That said, there are a few somewhat related ideas I’m bouncing around:

1. We never actually touch anything. Even the densest materials are inevitably made up of empty space at the sub atomic level.

2. Everything is a wave.

3. Time slows as we approach the speed of light, and light itself does not experience time.

4. We live in a 3-Dimensional world, which is what we can observe in a universe that likely has more dimensions that we can’t experience.

As I sit here trying to make sense of this, I’m essentially a collection of space dust, that’s comprised mostly of empty space… which happens to be a self-conscious collection of waves, with limited senses… which can only sense things in 3-Dimensional space. All while travelling at a speed that is relative to where I decide to measure it, be that the speed I’m moving on earth, the speed that the earth is travelling around the sun, the speed that the sun rotates around the galaxy, or the speed that the galaxy is moving around the universe.

And when I look out at the stars at night I see light that has travelled millions of years to get to me. I’m seeing that star as it was millions of years ago, and right now that star might have gone supernova and no longer exists. Yet the light that travelled all the way from that star to my eye did not experience any time at all from the moment it left the star until it reached me.

But I got to observe it. There is a view from right here of this amazing universe, a universe I get to observe and experience in a way that no other entity ever will. I’m insignificant and yet I can find meaning… Me… a collection of stardust that understands what it means to exist, and interact with the universe even if I’m just a pattern of waves that never actually touches anything. And so while I’m insignificant, thinking of my place in the universe might be one of the most significant things this universe has to offer.