The natural world’s an astounding thing. I don’t mean your backyard, the Nature Preserve or the menagerie of beasts that roam State Street during all odd hours of the week. I mean something much grander than that.
A myriad of chemical reactions, laws of physics and biological phenomena all work together and, almost as if by magic, form a universe that somehow just works. When you stop and think about it, it’s really hard to not be awestruck by these facts.
Only recently has the greatest work from Mother Nature’s lab been invented: the human mind.
Now, I’m not trying to cut us short or anything (we’re also amazing physical specimens) but the feats of the human mind are astounding — how it has helped us grasp the wondrous world we live in, the problem-solving skills it provides, how it works in perfect harmony with our body, endowing us with a variety of senses. The list could, of course, go on.
Though, it seems nature has played a cruel joke on all of us: We were given the gift, or curse, of an imagination, one with the ability to create and conceive of things greater and much more entertaining than reality.
Despite my current life path, I’ll always love and be amazed by the sciences, but there’s just something about fiction, the fables and stories that have been bestowed upon us, which just fill me with wonder.
In fact, the sciences themselves become much more interesting through fiction, as science allows us to interact with the dinosaurs we’ll never get to see or the inventions of the future, which we were born too early to tinker with. Not only is nature toying with us, but so too are the writers who painstakingly create these tales.
Even the most mundane daily activities seem so much more appealing when seen through the romanticized, rose-colored glasses of fiction. The painful days we go through that seem to have no meaning, usually have a goal or purpose for our fictional counterparts.
We must also not forget the stories of those before us, which seem so grandiose and eventful when recounted in novels, when in actuality, the time period was probably a hellish time.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m a little jealous of the fictional protagonist. These characters who don’t even exist will go down in history while I live my life adventureless and in vain, as I strive to become even a blip on the radar of human history.
Characters my age are always off fighting glorious battles, exploring space, or are on some journey or another, while my friends and I lounge at home. And, even if we do think of something, it’s even harder to find the means to make it possible.
I usually look on the brighter side of things, but I’m not really sure what to say. I’ll never get to see the dinosaurs I’ve loved since I was a little kid, and astronauts may never walk on another planet in our lifetime. Hell, I may never even get a chance to see all the beautiful places that exist here on our own Earth.
I suppose all I can say is that we need to value the reality we’ve been thrown into. It’s time to stop latching onto fairy tales that attempt to overshadow all that Mother Nature has done and try and find the hidden gems in our universe which we’ve put on the back burner for way too long.