Friday is my coding day. So I wake up at 6 AM (not easy with Hangad practice the night before), leave my condo at 6:45 AM, and pull into my parking slot at 6750 Ayala at exactly 7 AM. Then, since the office air conditioning isn't turned on until 8 AM, I stop by Starbucks for breakfast and pop open my laptop to do some light work, or even just clean up my desktop (where I put unread e-mail attachments).
I usually go to the counter, order a basic black iced tea (tall, with less ice, no valencia syrup, thank you) and a sausage roll (yes, heated, please), head upstairs and sit at one of the couches. It's usually quiet for the hour that I'm there.
Not this morning. When I went upstairs, an American family was occupying the mezzanine's semi-enclosed carpeted area -- a man, two ladies (cousins?), three little boys and a little girl. They were noisily playing an educational game about the solar system. I couldn't really get what the objective of the game was -- all I could understand was that several cards, each with a planet or body in the solar system, were randomly distributed to the kids. One of the ladies (who seemed to be the game-master of sorts) was using it to educate the kids about the solar system.
"Which planet has rings?"
"Who can tell me about asteroids?"
"Jupiter is as big as 1,000 earths, and it has 14 moons."
"The sun is the biggest star." (Wrong.)
"Is the earth's surface more land or water?"
"Who's got the card for Uranus?" (The man tried to suppress a smirk with this one.)
I usually get irritated with noise, but I didn't mind this time because they were American. Just kidding. I didn't mind because it got me to thinking about how long it had been since I really gave thought to the solar system. (The last time, I think, was when they stripped Pluto of its "planet" status... and even then, only in passing.)
I used to love the solar system. As a kid I had a book of paintings of the planets and their moons, the histories of each planet, and even the legends behind their names. (I just looked at the pictures, though, and so I still don't know who Io and Ganymede are in mythology.) I loved it just because it was fun, and the pictures were pretty. And listening to these kids and their Mom / Aunt, I realized how caught up I'd gotten with day to day things that I don't get to think about fun and pretty anymore. The phrase "matters of consequence" comes to mind.
At the same time, thinking about the solar system rubs it in how small and insignificant we are. A few weeks ago, during a particularly boring training, I downloaded Google Earth (thank God for office-wide WiFi). That night I showed James all the addresses I'd pushpinned on the map. He said, "Makes you feel really small doesn't it?" And that's just Google Earth. Think what Google Jupiter would be like.
The family left Starbucks earlier than I did. Though it had was quiet after they left, I had enough thoughts about the fun-ness and pretty-ness and smallness and insignificance to last me the day. I got the office unusually bright-eyed today. No, not because of any "moral lesson" about "stopping to smell the roses"... but simply because there's nothing like side-nudging introspection to perk you up early in the morning.
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2 comments:
hiya, pau ;p
as stated by Fr. Dan McNamara in one of his articles regarding the cosmos
"We are children of the universe, stardust brought to life."
amazing how infinitely small we are, how seemingly insignificant our lives seem to be as compared to the vast and still expanding universe we are in.
la vita es bella ;p
bulls eye, ivygail! ;)
we'd always like to think that it's a big, wild world out there. but when you look out to the stars at night, it can be humbling to know that we are but a mere speckle in the infinite darkness we call outer space.
yet...
"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" (Ps. 8:3-4)
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