Cosmos Calling

I often wonder why I wake at four in the morning and just why I become so philosophical at that time.  Daylight comes and all seems well again. If the sun is shining on the nearby fields and cows much contentedly on the fresh green grass, my doubts and fears disappear just like the morning mists under the insistent glare of the rising sun.

Today, I think of the Cosmos... I often think of the Cosmos but today it is with saddness.  Right from being a small child I have looked up and wondered.  You know! All the usual questions and ones that are too numerous to be answered in this piece of writing.  What is frustrating me today is the way we as a world seem to scurry around, fighting, falling out and hating each other.  Yes, I know, there is love in this world.  Why then doesn't it conquer all?  I was talking to a friend the other day.  Several of us meet on a Wednesday for a few pints.  We talk on a wide range of subjects, but the one that keeps resurfacing is what lies beyond the atmosphere.

We call it the 'Hadron Colliders Society' for a joke, but it sums up my thinking.  I and my friends are happy to talk for hours about such matters.  None of us has a grounding in Astro-physics or indeed any of the relevant sciences.  So why?  That is in itself the answer WHY!  I have just retired from teaching and the only awkward moments I faced were those of total silence and dumb acceptance.  Some of my recent pieces have touched upon this lack of fire and it is to the world at large that I turn with the same frustration.

I have an image in my head of two people locked in mortal combat; each intent on the other's destruction.  Yet both are physically and skillfully matched and eventually they slump to the ground exhausted.  The blood lust gone; they pause and look.  First, at each other then they stare at their surroundings and finally upwards.  Each wonders WHY? Neither can remember what imperative lead them to combat and such futile combat. Released from their biological, animal instincts to survive, their minds are free to wander.

What if the whole world stopped fighting?  What if we all looked upward? Just imagine what we could have achieved together!  Mars would have been a colony by now and humankind would be long past the outer limits of the Solar System.  So what would that achieve you might ask?  Well, for me, I know I was born, made if you will by the stardust that came to Earth and that which made me will always call me home.