“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
Happy Birthday to Carl Sagan, who would have witnessed his 78th revolution around the sun had he not lost his battle with cancer.
Though his life was cut short, he continues to inspire me in a way I never could have imagined, and for that, I am grateful.
A professor last year, teaching us what was for most students our first non-1984 Orwell - which, btw, is mind-blowingly amazing - pointed out that if Orwell had not died of TB at the age of 46, he would have been alive during the Vietnam war, and what a loss that was for the world, to not have, basically, Orwell yelling at us about how bad we were fucking up. (That sounds insincere, but it is a huge loss.)
I’ve never really done the math on Carl Sagan before. But the idea that he could be alive now, writing books and chilling out with Neil Tyson (not to mention having been at SETIcon when I was there this summer, but let’s not be selfish), the idea that he could be, numerically should be, and isn’t, is really, really sad.
That’s enough sadness, though. We got him for 62 years, and we’re lucky.
