Welcome to Your Personal Infinity

Please don’t muck it up

Contrary to what your mother may have told you, you are the center of the universe. And I can prove it. It will only take a moment of your time.

Our origin as earthlings

People used to believe that the flat planet Earth was, vaguely, the center of the universe, perhaps resting on the backs of turtles, perhaps in other configurations. And people were something special then, chosen by the gods for special treatment that may or may not have been salubrious, depending on the god’s mood that day.

Scientists have now corrected the record and informed us that the Earth revolves around the sun, which zooms around in the Milky Way galaxy, which spins around in its course, and so on. We are lucky just to hold on in this cosmic game of crack-the-whip.

So we have recently learned from scientists that our planet is not special. As earthlings, we are not the center of the universe. We are infinitesimal. We are useless sparks in the conflagration of existence. We are next to nothing. We need to get over ourselves.

This notion doesn’t seem to be doing us much good, over all. In fact, it seems that in recent years, despite our bluster and belligerence, people’s self-respect is at an all-time low.

People with perfectly adequate lives are going around all pissed off all the time. Irony and apathy and rudeness seem to be enviable marks of sophistication.

Faced with crises that require concerted action, millions of intelligent and able-bodied people do absolutely nothing, strangely convinced that nothing they do will affect the course of those crises.

As earthlings, we seem to believe that nothing we ever do will matter to the universe, because in this universe, we are nothing. “Science” has proven it to us, once and for all.

Not so fast, science.

I’m not having it. Science likes to act as if it knows everything, but that’s just a facade. There are some questions for which, frankly, I’ve got better answers than science, so science can just shut up for a minute.

Infinity all over the place

We have all heard about infinity. It’s the concept we use to make ourselves sound ridiculous with our significant others: “I love you infinity plus one!” “Well, I love you infinity times infinity!”

All right. So here you are, in an infinite universe. And reality is stretching away from you in every direction, right into space, and beyond. Are you with me so far?

And since reality continues in every direction from you, even past where no one has boldly gone before, then the farthest ends of the universe would be equidistant from you.

Which puts you theoretically in the center of an infinite circle. Except that we’re talking about at least three dimensions, so it’s a sphere.

And since you’re the point from which we are measuring, that means you are right in the center of… well, everything.

And so is everyone else.

Look, if I’m missing some logical twist, or mathematical principle about infinities, or some anomaly of space-time, please don’t spoil it for me. I’m trying to make a point here — a massively important, cosmic, crucial point, I think.

We are no longer merely earthlings.

Each of us lives in the center of a universe that somehow intersects with the universes of other people.

We don’t always know which parts of the universe are ours and which parts are theirs. We would if we had a Venn diagram, though. (I love Venn diagrams. They are the prettiest part of math.) It would look something like this, except there would be no lines. So, really, nothing like this. But here it is anyway:

So when you move through this local world, and interact with other people, your actions affect them, because you are not acting on behalf of just your own little limited earthling physical self, all pitiful and insignificant.

You are acting on behalf of the entire universe of which you are the center and for which you are in some way responsible.

You may never know the significance of what you do, but everything that happens in the center of every universe is, by definition, significant.

You are not nothing. You matter.

You are the center of the universe.

Please act accordingly.