Pursuit

My current obsession is Space. There is so much I don’t know about space and it’s vastness, so I might be here a while. It started with watching a documentary about The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft that are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-40-year journey since their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto. ... Their primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. Then the mission was extended and Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and now both spacecraft are in interstellar space. Voyager 1, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan. The term "Pale Blue Dot" was coined by Carl Sagan in his reflections of the photograph's significance, documented in his book of the same name, Pale Blue Dot. When I saw this image of earth looking no larger than a blue pixel suspended in a sunbeam, it changed me. From this perspective which was 3.7 billion miles away, the earth was just this pale blue dot. So small against the expanse of the universe making us and our life’s pursuits even smaller. Seeing this picture made me want to stop the pursuit and just be who I am, and do the things that bring me joy and happiness, because when time is measured in light years, our average life-span is truly like the blink of an eye.  I’m 53 now and I have been pursuing one thing or the other for as long as I can remember. If life is a four-act play, then I’m in the third act and I don’t want to get so caught up in the pursuit that I miss my life … the good, the bad and the ugly of it! So I am doing more doing. I am listening more intently, I am loving harder and connecting more with the people in my life who matter. I am an artist doing my art. I am doing more of the things I love. I am allowing my true self to be seen and heard. I am doing me …