Realizing what I don't know
Some time back, when I was reading Liu Cixin's Supernova Era, I became curious about supernovas and started researching them online. I learned that they created nebulaes. And then I found out we had images, pretty crisp images of nebulaes, that look like this:
Really pretty, I thought. When I first saw these, I loved how ethereal they looked, and how colorful in all sorts of odd ways they were1.
And then, I realized something.
Those little dots, in front of the nebula? They're stars.
Stars, massive things possibly bigger than our sun, which itself so big that it blocks out a whole circle in our sky despite being 150 million kilometers away, and pumps out such an insane amount of energy that the little fraction of it that happens to reach me is enough to light up my entire city so much it hurts to look outside with my eyes open.
And this, this single nebula, is so freaking big these STARS look like little specks on the thing! And who knows how far behind these stars the nebula is! We haven't even taken perspective into account yet!
That was a while ago. Now, when I look at the picture on top, I don't get the same sense of wonder and awe I did before. I just see it and think, yep—those are stars. I haven't wrapped my head around the idea in any real way, either...I guess my brain's just accepted that it's never going to understand. But I still remember slowly looking through all the images on the Wikipedia page for nebulas, gawking and just letting it sink in.
That was the first time in my adult life I saw something I genuinely couldn't comprehend2. And the interesting thing is, it's not like I was looking at visualizations of how big nebulae were. I didn't see any graphics explaining how big nebulae were. I didn't even look at any figures for the sizes of nebulae. I just saw this picture and, wow. There it is. It's that big. Deal with it. That's how I felt.
This in and of itself is pretty fascinating, in my opinion. But a few minutes before I started writing this post, I watched the lake scene from Good Will Hunting.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly that interests me so much about this scene, because Robin Williams' lines about love are all spread out over the course of a minute or so. You'll just have to watch it to get what I'm talking about. But listening to it, it felt like seeing those nebula images for the first time.
When he talked about sitting by his wife's hospital bed, I closed my eyes because there was just so much to process in the words alone I didn't want to be distracted by the movie footage. Again, it's no longer as powerful as when I was first exposed to it. I guess a part of its impact is due to how I had no idea just how incredible what I was about to listen to was. But hearing these lines, it makes me think...Wow, people love each other this much?
Maybe that's why there's so much art about love floating around. Maybe that's why there's so many books, plays, poems, and songs about romance. I always thought the people who wrote these things were just hyping themselves up and knotting themselves into pretzels trying to make a big deal about a tiny, little, regular amount of affection. But what's going through their heads was anything like the dialogue in this scene...yeah, it makes sense that they would want to express these feelings in some way, and share them to the world.
It also makes me wonder about my future. I'm off to college in less than two months, and if I'm ever going to find the love of my life, it'll probably be there.
Am I going to meet someone who makes me put her every need above my own without a second thought? Someone whose face I could gaze at for hours? Someone who I wouldn't change a single thing about, despite all her flaws? Someone who I'd solemnly swear to spend the rest of my life with, without a moment's hesitation?
These are just the dumb yappings of an eighteen-year-old who knows nothing about life. For now. But after watching that scene...I can't help but feel a little more excited about the things to come.
PS: I realize that Robin Williams is an actor, that he is acting out this scene and that he definitely has not experienced everything his character mentions in his speech. For some reason, this doesn't make me doubt the truth of these statements at all...maybe true wisdom is recognizable regardless of who you hear it from. Or, maybe I'm an idiot who's easily moved by emotionally poignant scenes. I'd rather believe the former.
This turned out to be partly because NASA sometimes uses narrowband imaging—taking pictures by capturing light at specific wavelengths different from those which we naturally see. It's a technique used for medical purposes and, you guessed it, photographing nebulae. Even if that means a lot of these nebulae pictures don't represent what I'd see with my bare eyes, they're still cool to look at, I think.↩
I'll bet this happened a ton when I was a kid. In fact, I'll bet this was my normal reaction to any new concept that my little toddler brain hadn't touched yet. But that's probably why I don't remember any of it.↩