Greetings everyone,
I originally wrote this piece in Swedish, and after it was published in a local media outlet here, I decided to translate it into English to share with you all.
The article touches on that common frustration when we feel stuck in one way or another. My hope with this text is to help ease our inner friction and remind us of the continuous, magnificent movement we are all a part of within the universal macrocosm.
I would love to hear your thoughts!
Title: Everyday Astronauts
Throughout our entire lives, we are in constant motion. Not for a single second are we in the exact same location in the universe. And not once during our lifetime will we ever pass through where we once were.
When we are stuck in traffic, waiting through a meeting that drags on, or just feeling paralyzed in front of a screen, it is easy to believe that life has come to a halt. We experience a sluggishness. A feeling of being stagnant in a world that requires effort just to move forward.
But this physical passivity is an illusion. Even when we sit perfectly still, we are passengers on a cosmic journey. A journey where we tend to consider change as an element of time.
Speaking of change, since you began reading this, you have traveled an astonishing distance:
The Earth spins on its axis at roughly 1,600 km/h. Simultaneously, our planet hurtles along its orbit around the sun at over 100,000 km/h. Our solar system moves through the Milky Way, and our entire galaxy is, in turn, pulled toward other massive structures in the universe at millions of kilometers per hour.
We do not move in circles. We move in an endless spiral through space. The exact coordinate in the vacuum where you were this morning no longer exists as a possible destination. We can never return. As a passenger in this solar system, you have traveled roughly 12,000 kilometers every single minute of your life.
To put this into perspective, that is the equivalent of completing a full lap around the Earth’s equator just over every three minutes.
This dizzying realization shouldn’t frighten us; rather, it should serve as a kind of mental lubrication in our everyday lives. Why? Because it defuses our inner friction. If we are already dundering through space with this unavoidable, tremendous force, the threshold for tackling the day’s earthly tasks and “moving forward” suddenly seems much lower.
To “move forward” then becomes less about achieving rigid results, and more about finding a sustainable flow within the movement that is already carrying us.
Life is in full swing, moving at a staggering speed, and we don’t need to work at NASA to feel like astronauts in whatever task we are undertaking in the present moment.
Fact Box / Sources:
- Earth’s rotation: Approx. 1,600 km/h at the equator. (Source: Scientific American / NASA)
- Earth’s orbital speed: Approx. 107,000 km/h. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
- Solar system’s speed through the Milky Way: Approx. 720,000 km/h. (Source: NASA, defined by the sun’s movement relative to the cosmic microwave background)
- The Milky Way’s speed through the universe: Approx. 2.1 million km/h toward “The Great Attractor”. (Source: ESA / Hubble Space Telescope)