Everything We Never Knew (another letter)

I was thinking of the whole planetarium experience, and how you asked me if seeing all that, the size of the universe, made me feel small. It put me in awe really, it amazed me, but I think it affected you a bit differently than it did me. I'm always feeling the weight of space and the weight of time pressing down on me. I'm not sure when it came about, but suddenly there it was, this information that kept me up at nights and gave me bouts of anxiety while I tried to sleep. I've felt that way so often its no longer surprising.

I wonder if other beings in other worlds have the same search for meaning.

What I wanted to say was, what makes me feel the way that you felt in that instance is knowledge. For me to feel that exact feeling and in that exact way is to be confronted with all the things in front of me that I have yet to learn. To stand in a library and see all the amazing books I might never have the time to read, it frightens me and fills me with the same optimism that you described. I suddenly feel both limited and limitless all at once, and usually filled with a new desire to read more, to learn more on every subject to ingest as much as I can, till I can no longer ingest. I'm more afraid of dying without knowing, than I am afraid of dying, to be frank (and I'm fairly afraid of death). I'm afraid that I can live my life and not know so much, to never have read the words of Nietzsche, right now makes me immediately sad. Infinitely sad. to know that there is still time, lightens the load. We all have the capacity to learn so much, to experience so much, to move beyond ourselves into something higher, to experience enlightenment (whatever your definition maybe), to be interested and passionate about things (ideas, art, people).

My startlingly large universe is filled with pages that I've never read. Yours is filled with supernovas that you'll never glimpse.

M