When it captured this mesmerising picture, the Voyager was drifting mechanically across the empty space, looking through the archives of lost stars, dense asteroids and inhabitable planets.

What does this tiny speck of a full stop signify? Carl Sagan has already put it quite beautifully, my words might never hold the weight of those poignant statements.

But I’ll have to say what it makes me feel anyway.

For the crime of being sentient, my thoughts sometimes engulf the rest of me. I see this picture during those times, I feel a bit better because of its elemental insignificance. It’s beautiful nihilism, the picture acts as a safe space that almost saves us from the clutches of the ominous devil that is inside us.

Sagan observes humanity’s naivety, its self-absorption, and its ever-fired-up ego, which fools us into believing that “we are the main characters of everything”.

And then he says, look at this fucking picture.

Does this picture make you feel that? If anything, it mocks our ridiculous audacity. It laughs with glee at our stupidity. Are we the main characters? We barely have any character left these days. From wars to duels, we strive to fight. We are also fighting against forces that have no names, or phantoms our psyche dares to manifest. We wage wars within ourselves. That is more annihilating than any freaking bomb.

This Earth is the place we inhabit for a very brief period of time. But still, we cast a blind eye to the beauty it offers. We are busy fighting the darkness we create. We are occupied with following the order that society manufactures, never daring to opt out or explore what else is out there. Stories are beautiful, they make us feel things, and we believe in the patterns only we can weave, but can they save us?

We call on the gods to do that for us. We are desperate to find it in the shrines we built where its foundation is tainted by blood. We call out, we pray, and we cry out in sacred anguish to the Dude upstairs to undo our own doing. We writhe and moan and scream when death comes to our doorstep. And then as Emily Dickinson said we become Dust. We go as we come, unable to even hold on to our skins and bones as ours at the end of our time.

Look again at that dot of a rock. Does it look lonely? It must be right, unlike its companions, it is the only planet that we presently know of that can create the magic of life and sustain it ever so beautifully. Its lone existence somehow reminds us that we too, in our collective spirit are alone. We may look, hard and long at the emptiness, hoping somebody would react to our echoes, but it’s just our own voice we find travelling back to us.

What it’s like to be the only planet to sustain life? What’s it like to be the only planet to power consciousness?

It’s mind-blowing but it’s also overwhelmingly lonesome. To be the only planet that has a liveable atmosphere, perfect balance of gravity, air and water. Our Earth is a weirdo in the midst of all these grand gas giants.

A weirdo that’s kind enough to inhabit a species like us.

This blue rock holds magic. It contains darkness. It inhibits chaos. It is powered by life. This tiny speck is sparkled with the hopes, dreams and fears of its inhabitants. Our astounding ability to evolve, create, and think is shrouded in it.

Here it is, barely a circle, engulfed by the water, the sweet child of the space carrying the weight of our insignificant existence. Here it is, our lonely planet, moving around the sun to fuel our life without a day’s miss like an ardent devotee circumambulating their favourite shrine.

Not necessarily.

We can soak in the insignificance of our existence in the grand scheme of things and just try..

Try to be more kind, more present and less so full of ourselves all the time.

Knowing about the inherent meaninglessness of everything, helps us give our own meaning to our experiences and life. That tiny speck in the vast mirage of nothingness should humble us, after all, as Emily Dickinson once said-

This quiet dust was once Ladies and Gentlemen.

And let’s not let the threat of death take over this absurdly cool experience of being human.