I was tired emotionally and physically, and slept the minute the flight took off. Why they have international flights taking off in the wee hours of the morning I don’t understand, but there we are. Groggily, mid way through the flight, I switched on the console to see where we were. Just a month ago, I was flying over Russian airspace on my way back from India. The situation in Ukraine was already deteriorating. There was nothing for it. What was this mad rush for controlling more areas? Tanks were piling up near the borders then, and another crazed ploy for power, influence and space was in motion. Would we be able to defuse this situation without it escalating further and displacing thousands?
I took this picture of the console after we passed over Russia.
Involuntarily, I sighed and sent a little prayer, indulged in a little wishful thinking, and thought of Carl Sagan’s quote on the little blue dot. It was dark outside making our obscurity in this universe even more stark. The flight shuddered, and the seat belt signs came on. The pale blue dot and its trappings of our ego, power and greed never feel more real than when at the mercy of the headwinds around one. The cloak of gravity over the precarious egos on the planet.
In the month since, the situation has deteriorated multi-fold as we all know. Sanctions have been imposed. No flights over Russian airspace and through the Ukrainian region.
The threat of another World War looms high in the air. Syria remains in the throes of civil war. Even in moments of alarm, I belong to that category of people who believe in the balm of time and all that. Give it time, things will resolve. Give it time, reason will stagger back to its throne in the head etc.
Will time be able to help the situation from escalating into a Third World War? I hope so. Fervently. After all, we are smart enough to have the technology and weapons to annihilate ourselves several times, and are dumb enough to do so.
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.
Carl Sagan in the book, Pale Blue Dot
Nourish-n-Cherish 