My friend on Twitter, Billy Crammer, made this beautiful video reminding us of the bigger picture which is something Elon Musk is always seeing. Many of us humans live in our own little worlds filled with problems, drama, love, emotions, challenges and each of these shapes us into who we are at our core.
In Billy’s video are stunning visuals accompanied by Elon Musk’s narration of Carl Sagan’s book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future In Space.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
“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.”
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.”
The unseen horizons are not unseen because they are so far beyond our sight that we can’t see them. They are unseen because many humans often have tunnel vision. We think about the problems we have and what we’re going to do tomorrow. The light bill, school and work, and in some cases, trying to survive.
Many often criticize Elon Musk for being seemingly out of touch with those on this planet suffering, but he is simply looking beyond the unseen horizon. He’s trying to solve a problem that would impact all of us. If an extinction-level event were to take place on earth, we wouldn’t have to worry about the light bill, food, or going into work. Well, some corporations in America would actually tell you to still come in — that is how corrupt our system is here.
This corruption, I feel, is something that would destroy humanity as a whole. It’s a system that tears apart, divides, and makes us focus on the immediate day-to-day while perceiving future events as something far off or would probably never take place in our lifetime.
People like Elon Musk are important for societies of humanity to evolve. They are the builders, dreamers, and creators of the future. However, we can play that role in our own lives but in order to do so, we have to learn to look beyond the unseen horizons. Therin lies our canvas — a place for us to create a better life for ourselves.
I was homeless once. Didn’t know how I would survive much less knew what I would be doing in the next five years. This mentality of surviving day to day is taught. We have to unlearn that mentality, while still surviving but planning for a better life. This is what Elon Musk is doing for humanity. To survive, we must look at the horizon. To thrive, we must chase our own unseen horizons. Billy’s, Carl Sagan’s words, and Elon’s passion all serve as a reminder.
“We’ve got to be excited about the future. We’ve gotta do things that make us want to live. It cannot always be about problems every day. Do you want to wake up every morning and everything’s just a problem? What inspires you? What makes you excited about the future?”
— Elon Musk.
