Morning Tash Appreciators,
I must first apologise for this week’s TF hitting your inbox in the “old” format. Technology 1 – TF 0.
I came across this photo this week:
It’s quite a famous one, called the Pale Blue Dot. It was taken from the Voyager 1 Spacecraft in 1990, when it was around 3.7 billion miles from home. Earth is – surprisingly enough – the pale blue dot about half way down the brown strip on the right of the photo.
Carl Sagan was so moved by the photo that he wrote this:
“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.”
Within the entire universe, the chances of humans (a) coming along and (b) surviving, must have been minuscule. But we are still here. It would be a shame to waste that kind of luck by not taking full advantage of what we have around us.
The difficulty we mere mortals have is that, as small as it is, we all sometimes feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. For most of us, this is a problem and can make things feel quite unpleasant. After all, we can’t all be as strong as this guy:
Thankfully, in my experience, if you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, the strain can be made manageable if you have at least one other person there to help you carry the burden. I think that’s the kind of thing that Sagan was getting at – we make the most of this Pale Blue Dot when we band together, and help each other through the harder times in life.
I cant leave this week without saying a few words about James Gandolfini, who died this week. His portrayal of Tony Soprano was some of the most compelling television ever made. He constantly made the audience despise him and root for him all at once. For me, it was all in the eyes – they really were the window to Tony’s soul. It seems that the same could be said for Gandolfini himself:
I know I say this every week, but KEEP GOING!
Tash Friday 