Life, like the universe, rounds off to darkness where it runs out of time, and contemplation of one’s death is perhaps the mainspring of astronomy and other human strivings. It is to celebrate the audacity of life confronted with death that we cherish admirable dying words like those of Thomas Hobbes (“I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”). Perhaps the key to dying well - or living well - is to have laid in a stock of worthy memories. To that end, when darkness is falling for good, it is well to have in mind, in addition to memories of human love and loss and of the natural splendors of this world - of birdsong at dawn, the roaring spray of the surf, the sweet smell of the air in the eye of a hurricane, the workings of bees in the throats of wildflowers - a few memories of the other worlds as well. If you have seen plasma arches rising off the edge of the Sun, yellow dust storms raging on Mars, angry red Io emerging from the shadow of Jupiter, the golden rings of Saturn, the green dot of Uranus and the blue dot of Neptune, the glittering star fields of Sagittarius and the delicate tendrils connecting interacting galaxies, have watched auroras and meteors writing silent signatures in the sky - if, in short, you have seen not only this world but something of the other worlds, too - well then, you have lived.
Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark

Source: wilson

5 Notes/ Hide

  1. iampedantic reblogged this from wilson
  2. wilson posted this