I went with my girlfriend a week ago to the American Museum of Natural History near Central Park (NYC), mainly to watch the movie Colossal Collisions with the voice of Robert Redford (wondrous, really). and it just got me to thinking about our place on this Earth. For all that we clutter our lives with, the politics, debates, bills, social life, anger, hate, and yes, even love and / or lack thereof, we also forget how really infinitesimally small we are compared to the rest of the universe, and even the galaxy. Thus, it’s imperative for us to also keep everything in perspective, even whilst the universe changes all around us.

I think of this today in light of my cousin’s mother’s death. Though I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met her mother, my heart sank when I heard the tragic news. Death is as serious as it gets for us, and what’s more, my cousin came to celebrate life (a birthday) rather than death. This cousin’s been like a sister to me, and to know that this long-time struggle with her mother’s health has come to this, hurts hard. It’s put my own relationship with my mother in perspective, with the tension we’ve had. In light of this recent death, the overall feelings for my mother is that I love her; none of our clashes can compare to that understanding.

Something Robert Redford said caught my attention somewhere between me wondering how they put this production together, and that’s the fact we look at all the major collisions that have happened in our universe, some insignificant and routine while others looked disastrous and cataclysmic. Yet, these collisions also produced Earth, and the Moon, and the universe around us, creating beauty and life all around us. Maybe we can take something away from the much larger celestial beings, as we too clash and burn, and how often, even when it seems the stars above us seem distant, they’re just like us in our rudimentary behaviors.

jose, who often theorizes on humans’ gravitational pull …