In The Scheme of Things

I hadn’t thought that I would ever be inspired by an Environmental Science textbook, but here we are, and It seems I have been inspired. We were given a chapter out of our textbook to read, although sort of reluctant to read it, I opened the textbook and I began. However, as the words blended together, one specific line suddenly stuck out to me, it read “Modern humans have been around for a mere 200,000 years- less than the blink of an eye relative to the 3.8 billion years life has existed on Earth”.

Although I had known we haven’t been around too long in the scheme of things, it had never truly hit me how little time we actually have compared to the rest of the universe. Though on a zoom call, that hadn’t stopped me from having a mid-life crisis. Just like that, my assigned reading of all sudden didn’t seem so important (I did however finish it). Trapped in my own head I had started to contemplate what this meant for me, why had it affected me so much?!

I have always played it safe, and for good reasons. However, I started to wonder how safe I could play it without scaring myself away from opportunities or lifetime memories? There have been plenty of times I’ve turned things down in fear I would embarrass myself or stand out too much. It started to dawn on me, I’m only young once, though cliché it sounded truer than ever. Why had I ever stopped myself from things out of fear of others, they aren’t living my life, I am. From here on out I’ve decided to live my life the way I want to, no holding back from fear.