Every now and again, as does everyone, I find myself consumed with the drama in my life. Personal interactions, local troubles, global issues. These are all important, sometimes even crucial. But when I can, I try to remember to leverage myself out, to try to gain some perspective.

Gazing into the depths of space, plummeting into the environs of a hundred quadrillion suns… that’s where true perspective can be found.

- Phil Plait of BadAstronomy.com

Some say science doesn’t make company with love, art, creativity, beauty, emotion and inspiration. Some say that science is cold, hard and calculating. Some say science has given us nothing but charts, graphs, formulas and numbers.

To this I have only one word : Perspective

If we look beyond the practical progress science has made on our lives, one of science’s ultimate triumphs is it’s ability to give us perspective. It allows us to understand what it is that we don’t know and work towards learning it. It lets us think outside the box; It is essential in the pursuit of knowledge. You cannot invent a car if you do not know of a land too far to walk. You cannot invent the plane if you do not know of a land too far to travel by car. We cannot invent a spaceship if we do not know of a land beyond our planet.

To understand we are one of billions and billions allows us to truly understand who we are and how we interact with the universe around us. If there is one belief of mine that I cannot stress enough to others whom I explain my deep interest in space with, its that perspective allows us to see the world as it really is. Perspective underlines the entire purpose of writing on this blog; my desire to want to give readers a sense of perspective.

Most humans on our planet seek a better understanding of our world through words in a book, or words spoken by a spiritual leader. This is understandable, it’s a fairly well known human trait to seek answers this way. It is through perspective that we can move beyond this and seek to understand our universe as it really is and not how we would like to see it. Reality pays no heed to our conceits.

There are more worlds undiscovered in the sky than all the words written in all the books or all the words spoken on our planet combined.

That inspires me. The perspective to even be able to grasp the astonishing majesty of our universe is truly amazing. Take a moment to look at that image, gaze deep into it, and imagine that its possible that each of those specks of light could be millions of suns, with planets around them. And each of those planets could have beings on them, right now, at this very instant looking up at the sky and wondering the same thing. Perspective is beautiful.

Image source : http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/05/a-thousand-trillion-suns/