The Universe, Big and Small

I
A few years ago, on a trip to New York, I walked the Cosmic Pathway at the Natural History Museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space. A person's stride is measured in a million years, and I stepped through time from 13.7 billion years ago when space "appeared everywhere in the universe" to "the human era . . . depicted at the end of the pathway as the thickness of a human hair."

II
Yesterday, I read "The Origin, History, Evolution & Future of the Universe" on Space.com and re-learned that the universe is "ancient and vast, and expanding out farther and faster every day." Ancient and vast. And ever expanding. The Infographic Gallery, like the Cosmic Pathway, provides humbling evidence of our insignificance in the history of the cosmos. 

III
This afternoon, cleaning a shelf, I found several Asian lady beetles, those few of the thousands who moved inside during our fall swarm. Their little bodies, some feet down and others feet up, lay rigid on the white sweep of wood I would wash. When they invaded, I fought them off, killed hundreds, taped my front door against the invaders. These corpses now fill me with . . . what? . . . empathy, perhaps.

IV

All day, I have been thinking of beetles. They far outnumber us -- in kind and numbers: 350,000 species in fact, or "22%" of all "described species." The "oldest beetle fossils" are from about "265 million years ago." Beetles are ancient compared to people, yet compared to the ancient and expanding cosmos in which we spend our lives, we are all young and insignificant.

V
Compared to the ancient and expanding cosmos in which we spend our lives, beetles and people are all young and insignificant. 

Big and small, for all a little tenderness.