Never be deceived by the manifestation of existence

Famous astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan in his book, Pale Blue Dot, writes that spaceship Voyager-1 flew in 1977 from Cape Canaveral and is still flying at a speed of 65,000 km/hour even after 43 years. It has got out of the solar system, and became the only object stationed farthest from the Earth.

In 1990, Sagan requested Nasa that when Voyager-1 completes its experiments and passes near Saturn, its camera’s direction is twisted towards the Earth. On Feb 14, 1990, the request was acceded to. At that time, the distance between the Earth and the Voyager-1 was 6.4 billion kilometers, which was so huge that light would take several hours to reach the Earth; and owing to the chasm between both, it was lost in the surge of light. The camera by scientific advancement found it out. The first reflection of the Earth was of a needle, illuminating like a dot of Sapphire, whose background was the gigantic universe, having seen the resplendent dot that is our Earth.

Upon this, Saga’s eyes were moistened and under the spell of that revealing moment, he uttered: “Look at the dot which is hardly visible, but for it our hearts throb because it is our earth — our mother; and whose dwellers are those whom we love. And there lives the one without him life is unimaginable; also there live people we know, and we hear of, who once lived with us but left us for an unknown destination. That dot is the place of our happiness and sadness and where the sublime religions were revealed. Besides them, great people with epoch-making ideas have graced this dot. The count of striking events and the people behind them is endless. The variety of heroes and villains is so vast that their heroics and treacherous ways seem absurd after the focus of the Voyager’s camera towards the Earth. Moreover, if we estimate the magnitude of the senselessness of the explorers who landed on the undiscovered continent for the first time, we will see that they became delirious, upon seeing the land. And, while letting out the cries of victory, they were exclaiming, ‘The continent is ours!’”

Sagan also tried to share with us how unimportant we and our planet are if we look at it from a distance and dispassionately. We had better be merciful for one and all and let this dot be in peace because it is our only home. For this labour of love, we have to hold human history in our hands in which the remains of kings, cruel dictators and greedy feudals — who once used to be a source of terror and fear — are lying inert and helpless. They had made others’ lives miserable, as the existence of common people meant nothing to them. They did it despite the fact of their eventual journey is towards the graveyard.

What happened in the past during the unbridled reigns might be discounted by some as those were the days of famine of information and knowledge, which was why the powerful had absolute sway over subjects to expand its rule. But in contrast to that inhuman manifestation of power, ours is a time of instantaneous dissemination of information, making people aware of happenings across the globe.

Sadly, the situation is not different from what used to be during kingships. The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a case in point, showing that the situation has not changed a tad and the world is still dancing to the tunes of the powerful. Some of those living on this planet did make efforts to change the course and pursue happiness, but they remained unsuccessful and were thus consigned to the grave, where their neighbours were the ones that had blocked them from attaining a happy life on Earth.

Perhaps, it is the outcome of the absurd run for finding happiness that caused Feodor Dostoyevsky, the Great Russian novelist, to write a letter to his brother, after the commutation of his death penalty to imprisonment in Siberia, telling: “Brother I am not sad over the punishment of living in exile in Siberia. I am not sad here, as life is the same everywhere. It does no difference to me, love is the real purpose of life.”

Here both Sagan and Dostoyevsky have the same view of life and Earth, which turns out vital, just because of the people whom we love, otherwise, the rest is a dot and its shadows.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2023.

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