A Grain of Sand Can Help You!

There are times when you are beset with worries and your mind is a fevered sac of vain imaginings and gloomy forebodings. There is darkness all around and you are so troubled that you cannot sleep.

At such times it may help you to try a thought experiment.

Consider a grain of sand.

Would you agree that if a cosmic laser beam were to zap a single grain of sand taken at random from any of the beaches or deserts of earth, it would not be a big deal? You certainly would not mourn this as a great tragedy. Or a tragedy at all.

I have asked this question at hundreds of talks and nobody had a serious objection. The elimination of a single grain of sand is not even worth thinking about.

Now consider something else.

Let’s say the sun, our Sun, becomes a supernova. If this happens, it will immediately blow up and expand. It will swallow up Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt. Its circumference will almost reach Jupiter.

All your problems will disappear instantly.

Your rocky marriage, your stalled career, your intransigent children, your bouts of depression. All gone. No problem.

Your country’s feckless and corrupt politicians, runaway inflation, wars in many countries, global warming, crime and mass shootings, terrorism. All gone. No problem.

A low estimate of the number of stars in the Universe is 10 sextillion.

A rough estimate suggests there are around 7.5 × 10^18 (7.5 quintillion) grains of sand on Earth's beaches and deserts combined.

This means that there are more than 1,000 times as many stars in the Universe as there are grains of sand in all the beaches and deserts of earth combined. Quite likely there are even more stars.

So, if the sun were to turn rogue and eat up its planets and end all your problems, the cosmic significance would be less than that of a single grain of sand being zapped.

Think about this seriously. Ponder it.

One of the most memorable lines in Casablanca is when Rick tells Ilsa that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in a crazy world.

Here is that scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLQwphwP0ys

The more you meditate on what I have just shared with you, the less daunting your own problems become.

Peace!