Cosmos...

Just finished watching Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos.

My throat is tight and my imagination is off on adventures all over the place.

It's amazing... I didn't know who Bruno was or what he had done. I know... how is that possible? I'd heard the name, but other than that...

But hearing his thoughts on the universe... I believe like he did. He told the people of his time, "Your God is too small" and they called him a heretic. Perhaps he should have more diplomatically said, "Your concept of your God is too small. He is bigger than you can imagine."
Might not have been burned at the stake. Then again, talking like that today, with all we DO know, can get you looked at funny in some areas. (Ask me how I know!)

I loved Cosmos then, I have a feeling I'm going to love it now.

One thing that I've been contemplating since the beginning of the show, though... Neil said how knowing how very vast the universe is makes us feel small. But honestly, I've never felt that way.

As long as I can remember, I've thought I was more than just a speck of dust on a bigger rock floating about in an endless expanse of space. I don't look at pictures of the cosmos and think about how tiny I am... I think about how big and wonderful it is, how very much I would love to be able to explore it, to visit other planets, see what other life is out there, to communicate with beings who have an entirely different existence from us.









Or what if they have been trying and we've been ignoring or misinterpreting the signs? What if sci-fi writers aren't just people with grand imaginations, but folks who are somehow tapped into that vast cosmic neural net of consciousness, connected to other beings who are attempting to show us their lives, in hopes that we'll show them ours in return. I know there have been books written where that sort of thing has happened. I've read them, I'll write them myself, my own version of it. :) 

Or maybe we're just dreamers, plain and simple, who look at the world around us and wonder 'what if'?' Maybe we are simply not able to be content where we are, with what we have, and we're the ones that feel compelled to push boundaries, imagine different ways of doing things, different ways of living that take us away from what we know.

Maybe that's all a science-fiction writer is... just an amateur theorist of scientific leaning. A dreamer. Visionary? Well, maybe, though we just call it imagination. I think it's when science fiction becomes fact that sci-fi writers are called visionaries. We knew it was possible... we just didn't know how to make it possible, if that makes sense. :) We leave that part up to the real scientists and physicists that have read our books and think, "But that might be possible... why don't we see?"

Okay... I've probably had enough wine! Time to step away from the keyboard! LOL

Or at least away from the internet. I should go write, while I still have stars in my eyes. ;)