Wednesday, August 26, 2015

That Time Chicago Turned Me Emo.

Chicago is great. There is always something to do, the museums, aquarium and the planetarium are awesome, food everywhere, sports, anything you could possibly think of to eat, see or do can come to fruition in Chicago.
That being said, enjoy this life lesson I picked up while visiting the Adler Planetarium.

On day 4 of our vacation, we went to the Adler Planetarium. This was on a Saturday so it was a little busy but nothing too crazy. We got to Adler about noon and with our admission we were able to choose a couple shows to watch while we were there. So we pick a couple, the first one being at 12:45, 45 minutes after our arrival. It was called "Welcome To The Universe" and at the beginning it seemed pretty awesome. Looked at the Earth, they outlined all the orbit paths of the various satellites, then they backed out to our solar system, then our galaxy. It was about this point when I stopped hearing the actual narrator and began hearing my own commentary which went something like this:

"Yeah, you see that shit? Do you realize how insignificant your life is? NOTHING MATTERS! To this universe, you are literally nothing. Earth, in it's entirety, is nothing, your solar system is nothing, hell your galaxy is nothing. In 2 billion or so years, the Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda galaxy are set to collide. IN 2 BILLION YEARS. Long after everyone is dead and gone, the universe will continue to be. So the Earth and it's people and all that you stand for, doesn't matter. The universe is the ultimate honey badger, it gives literally zero fucks. If all life on Earth ended right now, doesn't matter. Also, you are an alien."

There I am, in the throes of an existential crisis, wearing 3D glasses. If that's not a damn good metaphor for my life I don't know what is. I can solidly say I have never had a 30 minute film make me feel so insignificant in my entire life. And they have a guy who sits behind the audience narrating the whole time while running the film. I can't even imagine how that guy feels everyday after work. Maybe he does it so much that the words just don't affect him anymore. Or he has some serious, life affirming mantra he repeats regularly.

As if that wasn't enough, my mind decided to think back to the previous day at the Field Museum. Specifically to the exhibit that featured a timeline of all the mass extinctions. Seems to me we are due one any day now, in fact some scientists believe that we are already on the brink of the sixth mass extinction. "We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago." - The Center for Biological Diversity. So what's causing this? It's us. "99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities." Way to go humans, you dicks.

I have to say besides all that, it was a great trip. We did a bunch of stuff, saw a lot of things. I highly recommend visiting Chicago. The whole trip was super fun. Also Cirque Du Soleil's Kurios was probably the coolest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

2 comments:

  1. I think of this almost everyday!

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    1. I still think about it a couple times a week but lately I've been distracted by dimensional jumping, alternate timelines, that kind of thing. I need to get my priorities in order.

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