"Atomic Structure" [Facebook post from 01-13-2014]

When I first heard about atomic structure (yes, kids, this was very long ago, in a galaxy far, far away), I remember how it sparked my imagination and, at the same time, made such sense out of the world.  I love to see patterns in things—even if I’m terrible at codes and the like—and especially to appreciate how everything is connected.  I took this fascination with systems to all sorts of things: biology, anatomy, astronomy—these are obvious—but this is also one of the reasons I love the English language and its connections to so many other languages.  It is a living thing.  I nodded my head in understanding when I read “The Butterfly Effect,” and when the meteorologists on TV discussed El Nino and the Jet Stream and snowstorms on the other side of the world.

Being able to see the structure at the sub-atomic level that also is expressed cosmologically just blows me away.  Pictures of solar systems are easily an atom with surrounding electrons and other bits and pieces.  Then the solar systems become galaxies swirling in similar gravitational dances that stretch out even farther, into the infinite, like dancers in one big, never-ending ballroom…and the same dance is taking place in my bloodstream and in the petals of a flower and in the air molecules that I am breathing.

You knew I’d come back to poetry, right?  William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” contains some of my favorite lines:

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

I do not care in the slightest what your belief system might be, but if you have the intelligence and curiosity to take even a moment to consider what this means, you understand the true meaning of awe.  Those moments, for me, confirm that each of us has a place, even in a world of sand; an essence that continues to exist, even in the heaven of a wild flower; an infinite connectedness that can be grasped in the palm of a hand generations from now; and a presence eternal as Time itself.  Make the most of your moment.  Be connected.

May the Force be with you J

DrDan

01/13/14