Swimming in the fish bowl

I went for an evening walk around the neighborhood with my dog yesterday evening. The sun was beginning to set and the clouds were lit up a bright red as we meandered down the side streets. The sky kept my attention as the dog went through her usual routine of peeing and sniffing at will. It was one of those evenings where the temperature was a near perfect 75 degrees and the air was still.

I could not help but think of myself as a fish in a fishbowl. Here I was at around 150 million kilometers from the sun experiencing conditions that fit my species conditions for life nearly perfectly. All the life around me seemed to agree as the redbuds bloomed gloriously and the dog sauntered on down the road at the end of the leash.

I looked for the moon as we continued in silence. I thought of all the random events that played a role in me being able to experience that moment. I started with the accumulation of heavy elements from stars and supernovaes thousands of lightyears away and possibly millennia ago that had provided the chemical building blocks of life. I thought of our star in particular in providing the energy for every living thing I saw before me by turning hydrogen into helium at such a great distance away. I took a breath and turned to the constituents of the air I was breathing, primarily nitrogen and oxygen.

I remember thinking awhile back how limiting it must be to be a fish. For almost all fish, being outside of the water for any length of time is sure to result in death. What glorious wonders they were missing by being limited to the water bodies. I quickly realized that the same was true for us about the wonders of the depths of the oceans and lakes around the world. It occured to me that maybe we were the ones choosing the more limiting option.

As the dog turned the corner and guided us home, this thoughts continued to wonder. I continued where I had left off and realized that not only was being a human limiting in a sense of access to the depths of the ocean but also to every other atmosphere in our solar system. Even on land our dependence on earth's atmosphere makes as just as much fish in the fishbowl in the planetary scale. I suppose the round dome of the space suit is all the more fitting.

With that, I leave you with one of my favorite presentations on the topic of space, life and science. A man who became immortalized in a quote about making an apple pie, Carl Sagan.



Also, this post would be incomplete without a playlist worth listening to when you look up at the stars at night: