Do you ever wonder? (Part-1)

This series will be about what I think we all sometimes feel when we are out exploring, traveling, or just commuting. If you do relate to any of it, please leave a comment!

London Underground Rail

I was traveling with my friends to London, and since the phone network doesn’t usually work inside the tube trains, I either talk with my friends or just observe the crowd.

We are in a universe, which is 13.8 billion years old. Life originated 4 billion years ago, and we modern humans (homosapiens) who share 98.5 % DNA with Chimpanzees originated around 150,000 years ago. Till then we have come so damn far! Battling wars, famine, plagues, religions, nature, and whatnot! Can you even imagine the amount of time that has passed? and the fact that we are nothing more than an animal species that just got lucky. There was a time 70,000 years ago when our population had plummeted to just 10,000 and we were just about to go extinct! All the major technological breakthroughs have happened in the last 100 years or so. Just imagine what will we be able to do in the next 100, 500, or even 1000 years!

Okay, so coming back to the observation part, I watch the cabin, filled with people, some reading, some immersed in watching a movie, some humming songs, some couples just holding their hands and exchanging lovely glances and warm kisses to each other, some cute little children with blue eyes full of curiosity having the best conversations with their parents. Then there are some old people, sitting alone, struggling to use their phones with a single hand because technology has aged way faster than them.

And I wonder, do these people think about how lucky we are to have been born and to have the consciousness to wonder about our own existence because no other animal can do that! I am sometimes lost in my phone too, or even in my worries, just like them, but once in a while, this surreal realization strikes me and though it scares me too, at the same time it is a bit liberating.

It baffles me to think how insignificant we are compared to the colossal Universe that we are a part of, we could literally die any moment, the train could have an accident, or anything might hit us, but still, we worry so much! For all the petty things that won’t even matter in a year! We don’t realize this but we are just a doctor’s phone call away from being starkly reminded of the fact of our own mortality.

Every time I see a crowded place, I go into this kind of contemplation, which sometimes makes me feel better and sometimes adds to my already crippling anxiety.

Do you ever wonder?