For 2025, I made the decision to spend little to no time on social media. Making that decision brought me the awareness that I spend nearly no time on social media. I came to the realisation that I actually only use social media to post about my businesses and professional milestones; after which I log off.
With that realisation also came time—a lot of time to spend with me. I spent most of my winterbreak reflecting, and writing. In reflecting, I arrived at a rather particular thought; one that I see to always return to:
We are, Mostly, Nothing.
There’s a moment in every curious mind’s journey when the vastness of existence humbles you. For me, it comes with the realization that life, no matter how extraordinary, is simply not long enough. It is not long enough to know all there is to know, let alone to do everything that could be done.
This thought is both awe-inspiring and sobering. On one hand, it drives me forward—a relentless pursuit to contribute meaningfully in whatever time I have. On the other, it whispers a humbling truth: our contributions, no matter how vast, are but a flicker in the infinite timeline of humanity.
I’ve been reflecting on the obsession some wealthy individuals have with extending their lives or seeking immortality.
I believe the desire stems from this very realization: the understanding that time is limited and that our existence, when placed against the backdrop of the cosmos, feels small.
But here’s where I find beauty. I think life is carefully designed to be this way—to make us feel this limitation, to push us to strive despite our impermanence. Imagine a world where we lived forever. Would we have the same urgency to create, to connect, or to care? Would we feel the weight of a single day as precious?
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
This is where Carl Sagan’s famous words about the Pale Blue Dot resonate deeply. In the grand scheme of the universe, Earth is nothing more than a speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam. It’s humbling to realize that, as individuals, we are even smaller. Yet, within that speck, we create, we dream, we love, and we strive.
Our significance is not measured by size or time but by how we choose to live within the constraints of our existence. And maybe that’s the point. We are not meant to dominate the universe or extend ourselves endlessly. We are meant to do what we can, in the time we have, with the tools we’ve been given.
I think the greatest realization is this: we are, mostly, nothing.
And yet, in that nothingness, we find meaning. In our fleeting time, we build worlds within worlds, shaping legacies that may be small in the cosmic sense but monumental to those who share them.
So, I choose to embrace the humility of insignificance, not as a burden but as a gift. It reminds me to live fully, to love deeply, and to be intentional with what I create. Perhaps that is the only contribution that truly matters—not its size, but its sincerity.
Because even on this pale blue dot, our stories, no matter how small, are worth telling.
With love,
Ntha
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