by Kevin Coupe
I don't know about you, but there is much about the pandemic that I have found to be humbling.
You think that the world is an ordered place, that we have a nuanced understanding of how the planet works - even if we don't act on that understanding - and then a virus comes along that throws everything into chaos and challenges one's confidence in what we think of as "normal."
Humility is a good thing.
So, I think, is awe … at what we don't know or understand, or things with which we have limited or negligible experience.
Which is why I posted the picture above.
It is from the Hubble Space Telescope, currently celebrating its 30th year of what NASA calls "unlocking the beauty and mystery of space."
This new picture from Hubble, NASA says, shows "the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the 'Cosmic Reef,' because it resembles an undersea world."
I look at this and feel humbled and awed … and, somehow, an Eye-Opening sense of context and perspective that strikes me as important at a time when we all, by necessity, find ourselves looking inward.
Below is a video from NASA that explains more. Enjoy.
