Dear Reader,
Recently the word “nano” has been on my mind.
Webster’s defines “nano” as “one-billionth of a unit.” In other words, a nano-inch is not one-half, one fourth, or even one-hundredth of an inch; it is one-billionth of an inch. That’s pretty small.
One may assume that there is a God or a life force — that God is timeless, everywhere, all powerful, and infinite. As a part of God’s magnificent beauty and truth, there exists a universe of many universes, containing an infinite number of suns, stars, comets, and worlds. Within all those worlds, there is the planet Earth. Within the planet Earth is life of all sorts, including human life. When one pauses to look honestly at ourselves, one must conclude that in cosmic terms, we live for a nano-second.
If we live in this nanosecond, then everything else is on the same scale. We forge nano-relationships, consume nano-entertainment, accumulate nano-wealth, practice nano-arts, and navigate the world with nano-technology.
What, then is the meaning of our nano-lives?
It is a question that could swallow you whole if you let it. And yet the mystics — across every tradition, in every age — did not despair at the smallness of the human creature: they marveled at it. The very fact that something so infinitesimal could become aware of the infinity that surrounds it struck them not as cause for nihilism, but as the most astonishing miracle in all of creation. A single candle does not compete with the sun; it simply burns, and in burning, it illuminates.
Meaning was never meant to be measured against the scale of the cosmos. I hold that it must be measured by depth rather than duration, by the quality of attention we bring to a single moment, a single face, and a single truth spoken plainly to a neighbor.
Socrates, that well-known ancient philosopher, spoke of the examined life as the only life worth living; not the grand life, not the long life, but the examined one. There is something in the act of honest attention — to one another, to our communities, to the stories that pass through our hands like water — that resists the nano. When we truly witness another human being, something vast moves through something small, and the infinite, for a moment, looks through our eyes.
This is not a comfortable question to leave behind; it is one worth carrying, as each of us decides what we will do with our nanosecond.
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