Insignificant, Yet So Significant

Last night (10/1/16), Cody and I went up to a place called Ballparks. And it isn't your typical American baseball field. It's off the map, with only rugged roads leading to the top. We went up the mountain with the intention of camping, but ended up heading home due to early work schedules. One night, we WILL camp there and spend a lot more time amongst the hills of cinder from Haleakala.

Ballparks is a spot above towering redwood forests along a ridge line that is lined with cinder cones down to the ocean in South Maui. Maui is made up of two volcanoes: Haleakala and Kahalawai. Haleakala is the dormant/sleeping volcano that stands at 10,023 ft above sea level, whereas Kahalawai is an extinct volcano standing at about half the height. Haleakala is a shield volcano that has a bunch of pressure release valves attached to it and those release valves create cinder cones. The same cinder cones that Cody and I explored at sunset last night. To give you an idea of where we were on Maui, I found this map on Google just searching south Maui and held my cursor over the ridge line over the proximity that we could have been. At the very bottom of this ridge line is the most recent lava flow on Maui, and that area is covered in black, solid lava rock.

As the sun started to set, we drove as far up along the ridge as we could, dodging divets and boulders on the road, parked the car and started making the incline to the top of the cinder cone we ended at. Finally, we had this view. This was taken at sunset on my iPhone 6s.

The sunset was breathtaking, but what came to follow in the dark of the night were the infinite stars popping out of the sky one by one as the sun continued to disappear. During the summer season on Maui, we can see part of the Milky Way galaxy, and especially clearly on top of the mountain. About a week ago, Cody and I went to the summit of Haleakala for sunset and captured some long exposure photos of the Milky Way. Here is me, posing with my headlamp, and Cody took the photo.

Every time I witness the Milky Way on cloudless nights, my mind wanders and tries to figure out how something so huge and unfathomable can contain such LIFE. The universe reaches beyond what we can see, and there may even be other universes parallel to us with other life forms who are thinking the same thing, and wondering if there's anything else out there.

We humans are so small compared to our galaxy. But we are SO BIG compared to an ant. As humans, I believe many of us are caught up in wanting to be significant, wanting to leave a legacy, wanting to be remembered. But what does that even mean? We are still spinning ridiculously fast, zooming through space and launching toward an endless black hole. Are we even significant in regards to our universe? Sure, we are conscious beings and can analyze life as we know it, but will our findings ever be truly significant? We are so small within a galactic scale, so small that some may believe we are incredibly insignificant, but on an earthly scale, we are significant. It is almost as though our insignificance makes us significant because we have a burning desire to achieve significance. Whether it be significant to the world, or in our relationships, we have a constant desire to be wanted and remembered and thought of even if we aren't around. Maybe our earth has a different sort of consciousness and aims to be significant in the Milky Way since it is so full of us, full of life.

How can our universe be so huge and NOT contain other life forms? I can't wait to see what scientific discoveries come up in the future. I think everyone is in awe of the oceans and the universe because it is something so much bigger than us, and something we know very little about.

~Jill