OUR WORLD DOES NOT GO ON FOREVER

I wrote this when living on Okinawa and writing a weekly newspaper column.  I never sent it to my editor in Tokyo because I kept bumping it back for what seemed to be more pressing issues.  We were returning home after a three-day weekend on Yoron Island, where we rented motor bikes and tooled around the Island, terrorizing the locals with our family motorcycle gang.

 I’m standing on the deck of a huge ferry at the end of a four-hour voyage in the Ryukyu island chain.  Up ahead, peeking through the mist is Okinawa.

 Home.

 As the fog clears, I’m struck by how small our island is.

Of course, I know it is only sixty-seven miles long and three to five miles wide, but as we go about our daily business, it does not seem small at all.  It seems like an entire world.  We never had “island fever,” never felt confined.

The island is a busy place: work, school, restaurants, movies, bowling, ballfields, shopping, high school football games and hospitals.  Every day little dramas play themselves out for a million Okinawans and 54,000 Americans,– marriage, divorce, promotions, arguments, law suits, studying for tests, business decisions, school plays and so on.  People are buying and selling.  Laughing. Crying.  Arguing.  Dying. Falling in love. Getting depressed.  Like anywhere else.

Because I am surrounded by all this activity, I rarely stop to think that I live on a mere speck of a place that appears as a sliver on a world map.  Seeing it from the ocean was somehow jolting because it seemed not only small, but finite.

 Limited.  Trivial.  Insignificant.  Transient. Our world stops at the water’s edge.

The same could be said for planet Earth.  It seems big, and eminently complex, but seen from space it is the size of an atom.  Stephen M. Barr, physicist, and author of Modern Physics And Ancient Faith, estimates that the Earth compared to the universe, is in the same proportion as an atom is to Earth.   Surrounded as we are by eight billion people, six continents and four oceans, not to mention five thousand years of recorded history and a multiplicity of languages and cultures, the world seems huge, timeless, intricate, complex and multifaceted.   But seen from space, it is just, as Carl Sagan put it, “a pale blue dot.” 

More than two hundred years ago, Voltaire called us atoms shooting one another on a ball of mud.   We are specks on a speck.  Eighty or so years and you’re gone.   I believe – and now we are getting to the point – that our subliminal fear of our mortality drives us – and in some cases - drives us crazy. While it’s true that we are biological creatures driven to eat, to pleasure, to play and to socialization, we are also, unlike other creatures, psychological beings who are aware of our limits.  We are aware that time is not on our side.  We are aware that whatever mark we are going to make, we’d better hurry.  We are aware that if we want to leave footprints on life’s beach, then we had better step hard.  And fast.  And deep.  And now.

If we could take a ferry ride in from eternity, and see the island of our lives looming up ahead, we would be amazed at how small it is.  We would see ourselves encased in frail, transient bodies, but we have egos as big as all outdoors.  Our physical, mental and social needs occupy us every moment.  We seem so big and important to ourselves.  Each of us is the center of the universe, we are the focal point of all time and space, the most important being among the eight billion.

 But we are not the center of anything,

 So we scheme and plan.  We work.  We make money.  We marry the man with potential. We root for the home team.  We pray to our various deities. We wage wars and foment revolutions.  We jockey for position.  We fight little battles and big ones.  We keep busy and try to forget that we are racing against time; we try to forget that we are atoms on a ball of mud; we try to forget that from the perspective of the ocean, our lives, our battles, our pleasures and our pain, all are really insignificant when compared to Creation.  Each of us is an island on a bigger island, on yet a bigger island.  Out and out to the clusters of clusters of clusters of galaxies, and…

     And…

 Leaving aside the promise of Heaven and eternity (which are not exactly trivial), the best attitude to take – the only sane attitude to take – is to forget about our finiteness, to go ahead and enjoy the island.  This ball of mud is all we have.  If the surrounding ocean is vast and intimidating, it is best to ignore it.  Existential funks are no fun at all.

We pull smoothly into the port of Naha and disembark.  It’s good to be on land again.   Good to be home.  The sun is down.  The city still bustles.  Heavy traffic, Neon lights blaze on Highway 58.  A plane takes off.  The kids doze in the van.  Work tomorrow.  School tomorrow.  Lunches to make.  The mornings are always frenzied.  Gotta get the car inspected.  We are out of milk. Orthodontist appointment for Mandy on Thursday.  What is Clinton up to?   What was I thinking out there on the ferry? 

 No matter.   It probably wasn’t important.