Dear Cosmos... Love, Gloria

Dear Cosmos,

I’ll not begin with asking you about your wellbeing. I know you are in as good a condition as you can be considering everything that’s happened these past 13.77 billion years or so. Not to mention that to the dwellers of my realm, you are nothing but a humongous rocky, dusty void devoid of feelings, perception and above all, the ability to respond to my questions. I bet most of them found this letter weird even before they began reading it! But that is of no consequence to me whatsoever.

I think you already know all about me. I’ll soon tell you why.

I don’t know when was the last time someone remembered to update you on the whereabouts of this quaint little planet, so I’ll begin with the furthest back in space-time I can think of. A lot has happened in the last 600 million years. Things are a mess here, no less exquisite than the primordial soup which created you and me. But I guess things aren’t much different from that any day.  In short, while you were spinning away seemingly distant and unaffected, smashing worlds together and creating new ones from dust, my species has been incredibly busy developing into a so-called ‘intelligent civilization’ by blighting its only habitat to ruins and mutilating anyone and anything that dares cross paths with it. It is the result of our eccentricity that hundreds of species you created have been reduced to flimsy memories in momentary records.

But you already know that, don’t you? You are weird! You have created the strangest of things in the form of life. You put so many consciousnesses together, perceive yourself (Mr Sagan said we were your sense through which you did that), do all sorts of things through them and when you’re done, you take back souls at random not caring for those who depended on the lights of the ones whose consciousness you’ve extinguished. And you leave all the insufferable ones for us to deal with, carrying away the good ones sooner! And what a terrific trickster you are, creating illusions all around! I know of distances shorter than displacements, made such by your gigantic forces. All life is non-living at its core and every non-living entity put together behaves as if alive. You’ve done a marvellous job, conjuring up worlds inhabited by beings crafted out of nothing but a little energy and void, floating around aimlessly, wondering at everything they come across, wandering and getting lost in this mindboggling place and gosh! How you’ve succeeded at it! Mr Adams has painted the craziest and most accurate picture of yours I’ve ever come across so far! Perhaps so accurate that you could not bear to witness him revealing your precious secrets any more than he has! Yet his ideas and those of all you have reclaimed, have managed to survive the excruciating journey of my kind through the "vastness of space and the immensity of time" to reach, ignite and expand novice minds like mine. It’s as if a part of their consciousness is alive in me through ideas they possessed and brought forth to the world. How remarkable! Maybe that’s how you had intended for things to be all along.

Aren’t we all fragments of you – phoenixes risen from the same stellar ash - each carrying a part of your magnificent energy within us? Why then do we not see all alike? We limit everything and everyone within boundaries borne out of ignorance and apathy and put labels that only cause more harm than they’re worth! And – forgive me for the contradiction; can’t help it – we all have different DNA structures within us. Why can’t everyone just accept everyone else and themselves as they are? Why is the shared cosmic lineage not enough of a similarity? Why does everyone not look at things from every possible perspective before saying or acting?

Will I ever know? Will I ever come out of this trap of seemingly endless questions?

Who knows but you! Maybe there are things I’m not meant to know at all. Anyway, the most I can do is keep looking for answers, try to change what I can and learn to make peace with what I can’t. Sometimes I wish everyone thought like me; the world would be so much quieter and more peaceful but I guess it would become too monotonous. And you would not like that! After all, you relish variety! But imagine, even if everyone showed just a little more empathy and selflessness, the Earth would begin radiating warmth and happiness at a different level!

I often find myself lost in my pursuit – of who and where I’m supposed to be and how I’m supposed to carry forward the massive task you’ve entrusted me – a puny human - with, of driving the world towards some good in whatever little way I can. Horrible things are happening here every moment. With each passing day, my species seems to sink lower into this deadly disease that appears to have engulfed every one of us, robbing us of our human emotions and tenderness, leaving bare our brutal, beastly aspect. Had this been your plan all along for how things were supposed to unravel or were you unaware of what we would come to when you left the reigns of this world in the hands of thermodynamics and random probabilities, without a care for the consequences? I often find myself contemplating the relevance of everything and my thoughts begin to take a tumble into dangerous territories. Some days are really dark, making me wish I was not a sentient being or at least not a human at all. At least I wouldn’t think so much and feel so awful about it! But then you come back to trap me in your illusive glory, showing me things that make me want to live just a little more of this life, do that thing, visit that place, meet that soul… The list is endless. After all, the answer to understanding myself does lie in understanding you (and vice-versa).

All I know is, whenever I’m in doubt as to the significance of it all, you remind me to look up and show me some sort of spectacle that somehow lifts my spirit better than any living soul ever could! And I love you for it. I love it that I was born like me in this exact time and place, got to experience every single thing I did, encounter wonderful people (and some not so lovely yet useful in altering my perspective) that changed my life! I would not change a single thing in my life because they have collectively shaped me into who I am and made me realize who I want to be (or don’t). And more than anything else, I love the knowledge that I am a part of your grand design – however minuscule and insignificant – yet a child of yours nonetheless, made of the remnants of stars like the ones I wait to watch every single day, capable of perceiving your beauty, something that has existed since the beginning of time and that will exist eternally in some form or the other, just like you! This thought gives me a strange sense of calmness and detachment from the frantic flow of life all around me which grounds me into the present moment and I’m grateful for it.

I don’t suppose I can send this letter off into the depths of your creation aboard some spacecraft. I don’t know how useful or practical the idea is although there is a chance some alien civilization may find it insightful, that is if they find it. What are the odds? Your entire existence is such a game of odds! (Mine too!) At least that’s what we have deciphered so far. Only you know the accuracy of any of our deductions! But the point is, even if these thoughts of mine resonate within the mind of one living soul among your countless, I will have reached some part of you, isn’t it? And that’s good enough for me. The rest – where you take me, what marvels await me - is all up to you. As this consciousness that is me, I am here for your perusal just for a blink in your timeline, and before my home planet moves a fraction of an arc against its neighbours, I will join you in creating the marvels for the next ones to roam it. Till then, I believe, as Adams said, you are “big enough and old enough to look after yourself”.

Love,

Gloria

Dhanbad

September 29 2020

P. S.: I hardly think a place- or time-stamp has any relevance when you hardly ever allow the same event to occur twice at the same point in your coordinates.