I Wish More People Could Fathom the Fact That We Are a Part of Something Greater Than Ourselves
You carry stardust in your soul. Don't you know that?
🌟 Perspectives on “Something Greater.”
It truly speaks to me the way the awe-inspiring nature of existence is when I consider the vastness of the universe, the intricate web of life on Earth, and the shared human experience across history and cultures. Recognizing that we are small pieces of a much larger, interconnected whole often leads to a greater sense of humility, responsibility, and wonder.
The “something greater” can be interpreted in many beautiful ways, depending on one’s perspective:
Cosmically: We are composed of stardust, connected to the universe’s 13.8-billion-year history.
Biologically: We are part of the complex, global ecosystem and the continuous flow of evolution.
Socially/Historically: We are contributors to the collective human story, tradition, and knowledge.
Philosophically/Spiritually: We are connected by underlying principles of consciousness, energy, or a universal spirit.
That shared realization—the feeling of being part of this immense tapestry—can be truly transformative.
A Story of 🌌 The Mapmaker’s Daughter
Elara was a cartographer’s daughter, raised among crisp, sepia scrolls and the precise lines of latitude and longitude. She lived in a world obsessed with boundaries: the edge of the known sea, the limit of the forest, the border between her kingdom and the next. She learned early that reality was defined by boxes and frames.
One day, her father handed her his most prized instrument: a heavy, brass telescope. “Look up, Elara,” he instructed. “Maps aren’t just for the ground.”
That night, she carried the telescope far from the city lights to the highest hill. She trained the lens on the familiar, inky sky. But through the brass eye, the sky was not inky; it was alive.
She didn’t just see stars; she saw a faint, milky smudge—a river of light she knew was called the Milky Way. She zoomed in on a nebula, and the light that struck her eye was older than her entire lineage. It was light that had been traveling for thousands of years, carrying a message of such impossible scale that it made her small house, her town, even the carefully drawn lines of her kingdom, seem like pencil scratches on an enormous canvas.
A sudden, sharp panic seized her. She was infinitesimally small, a speck. Her life, a blink.
Then, she looked down at her own hand, gripping the telescope. She recalled her father explaining that the elements in the telescope’s metal—the carbon, the iron, the oxygen in the air she breathed—were all forged in the collapse of ancient stars.
The moment of panic dissolved, replaced by a deep, shivering recognition.
She wasn’t just part of the universe; she was composed of it. She wasn’t just under the universe; she was made of it.
The boundary she had always accepted—the line between Elara and the cosmos—collapsed. The light she was seeing was not just an outside phenomenon; it was the origin of the elements that composed her very body. She realized that the energy that made her heart beat was the same fundamental force that kept galaxies spinning.
The lines on her father’s maps didn’t matter so much anymore. They were useful, yes, but they were arbitrary. The true reality was a seamless, flowing current: from the core of a dying star to the oxygen in her lungs, from the root of a distant tree to the food that nourished her, from the ancient grief of history to the love she felt for her father.
Elara lowered the telescope, but the vision remained. The world hadn’t changed, but her perception had. She was no longer just a cartographer’s daughter; she was a momentary, conscious expression of everything that had ever been and everything that would ever be.
She walked back to the city, not as a speck lost in the darkness, but as a fully realized, interconnected fragment of the infinite. The feeling was not one of being small, but of being whole.
XO, The Light is You | with Linda J Wolff