How amazing and curious is world we live in?

11/05/2020 Status: Made it to Thursday. The weekend is in sight. I’m good.

Last night, I was reminded of what an amazing, curious world we live in. The reverie began when, preparing for bed, I stepped up to the bathroom sink to brush my teeth. I thought I saw a gnat or drain fly on the wall to the right of the vanity mirror. Without hesitation, I smashed it. But as my forefinger was closing in on the tiny, unfortunate creature, I realized it was an incredibly small spider, barely big enough for me to see.

It occurred to me that the diminutive arthropod was executing a plan conceived by its mind. As miniature as it was, it was a fully-formed spider with a brain, eyes, a nervous system, muscles, and internal organs. The scale of the cells making up the spider had to be infinitesimally small. Yet those cells themselves are made of far smaller atoms. And the atoms are made of staggeringly small leptons that are made of stupefyingly tiny quarks.

I’m standing before the mirror, toothbrush in hand but unused. After considering the teensy-weensy, my focus expanded out to this seemingly and perhaps accurately infinite Universe. Voyager 2 has left our solar system. It’s now 16.2 light-hours from Earth. But our galaxy is 1.9 million light-years across. Still, it’s just one of trillions of galaxies, some smaller but some much more massive.

Life seems to be a thrilling journey in an unbelievable place. But I bet the spider never gave thought to that.