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.
That’s a lot of galaxies. I wouldn’t be surprised if the universe is much larger than think. Maybe our little part is expanding while elsewhere it contacts, maybe a whole series of waves.
In the 1990s, with the help of Hubble, estimates ran as high as 200 billion galaxies. I believe that the most recent estimate is two trillion galaxies, each having upwards of hundreds of billions of stars. It’s exhausting to contemplate.
I enjoyed reading your piece...Can relate to wanting to leave footprints in the sand....better hurry & do it now. My mantra has been,"If not now, when?"
Ha! "We are not the center of everything" and "Existential funks are no fun" = both true and worth remembering. I tend to get caught up in those existential funks b/c they inspire wonder and awe. In that respect, they are fun but they don't really go anywhere. I enjoyed this piece a lot. You took me along with you to your days on the island. Thanks for that.
BTW, my touchpoint for Okinawa is that my dad served there on some of his tour of the South Pacific in WW2. Although he didn't speak much of those years, from time to time he would reference Okinawa .
Also, your post reminded me of Ernest Becker's book The Denial of Death. have you read it? There is another book called The Worm at the Core which was an equally interesting extension of Becker's book.
Written by Sheldon Solomon , Jeff Greenberg , Tom Pyszczynski
Gracie, I not only read “The Denial of Death,” but consider it one of the most profound of books. Amazingly, when Becker was dying of cancer in 1974, the year - I think - the book won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, he had death bed interview with psychology Today about his impending demise. Quite amazing.
6 and 1/2 years in Japan (west Tokyo). Vacationed in Okinawa every year but 1 because of a typhoon. I loved the feeling of home when on or near the base. West side of the island near Kadena (Manza Beach) is very cool and Ishigaki is awesome too. (subscribed/followed).
Thanks for subscribing. I was there for seven years; we all (my family) loved it. When we first arrived the typhoons kept rolling in which was also so different.
In a way it seem that we are meat in a sandwich of infinities. You can look in a telescope and be awed by how small we are, or look in a microscope and be awed by who huge we are, I guess. Take your pick.
Newton thought that at bottom everything is made of some substance of indivisible parts (once 'atoms' now the wavicles of the Standard Model). Leibnitz disagreed, saying that every thing can be taken apart into constituent parts (the strings of string theory, or the bits of Wheeler's it-from-bit theory). I'm a Leibnitz guy, myself. Everything is made of something else.
I love that phrase, “the meat in a sandwich of infinities.” The physicist whom I quoted, made the point that the Earth really isn’t all that small because it is halfway between an atom and the universe. Somehow that wasn’t particularly comforting.
That’s a lot of galaxies. I wouldn’t be surprised if the universe is much larger than think. Maybe our little part is expanding while elsewhere it contacts, maybe a whole series of waves.
A bucket of sand holds about a billion grains of sand. Our galaxy has around one hundred billion stars. Billions of galaxies.
I think the two trillion is what we estimate so far.I think we will never fully understand.
In the 1990s, with the help of Hubble, estimates ran as high as 200 billion galaxies. I believe that the most recent estimate is two trillion galaxies, each having upwards of hundreds of billions of stars. It’s exhausting to contemplate.
I enjoyed reading your piece...Can relate to wanting to leave footprints in the sand....better hurry & do it now. My mantra has been,"If not now, when?"
Thanks, Susan.
Ha! "We are not the center of everything" and "Existential funks are no fun" = both true and worth remembering. I tend to get caught up in those existential funks b/c they inspire wonder and awe. In that respect, they are fun but they don't really go anywhere. I enjoyed this piece a lot. You took me along with you to your days on the island. Thanks for that.
BTW, my touchpoint for Okinawa is that my dad served there on some of his tour of the South Pacific in WW2. Although he didn't speak much of those years, from time to time he would reference Okinawa .
Also, your post reminded me of Ernest Becker's book The Denial of Death. have you read it? There is another book called The Worm at the Core which was an equally interesting extension of Becker's book.
Written by Sheldon Solomon , Jeff Greenberg , Tom Pyszczynski
Gracie, I not only read “The Denial of Death,” but consider it one of the most profound of books. Amazingly, when Becker was dying of cancer in 1974, the year - I think - the book won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, he had death bed interview with psychology Today about his impending demise. Quite amazing.
6 and 1/2 years in Japan (west Tokyo). Vacationed in Okinawa every year but 1 because of a typhoon. I loved the feeling of home when on or near the base. West side of the island near Kadena (Manza Beach) is very cool and Ishigaki is awesome too. (subscribed/followed).
Thanks for subscribing. I was there for seven years; we all (my family) loved it. When we first arrived the typhoons kept rolling in which was also so different.
In a way it seem that we are meat in a sandwich of infinities. You can look in a telescope and be awed by how small we are, or look in a microscope and be awed by who huge we are, I guess. Take your pick.
Newton thought that at bottom everything is made of some substance of indivisible parts (once 'atoms' now the wavicles of the Standard Model). Leibnitz disagreed, saying that every thing can be taken apart into constituent parts (the strings of string theory, or the bits of Wheeler's it-from-bit theory). I'm a Leibnitz guy, myself. Everything is made of something else.
I love that phrase, “the meat in a sandwich of infinities.” The physicist whom I quoted, made the point that the Earth really isn’t all that small because it is halfway between an atom and the universe. Somehow that wasn’t particularly comforting.