The noted columnist, George Will, commented in the recent Washington Post about the Webb telescope and its amazing potential to record the beginning of time. Traveling in space, the telescope is receiving “stretched” wavelengths of light from the origins of the universe in its 18 gigantic mirrors, virtually an engineering miracle. Apparently, some light comes from the earliest galaxies that formed only 350 million years (a mere blip) after the Big Bang, which is dated as 13.4 billion Earth years ago. Moreover, our sun is scheduled to expire in 5 billion years, when Earth – our precious planet in which we each exist for a fleeting moment – in our Milky Way galaxy (relatively small at only some 200 billion stars) will collide with the Andromeda galaxy. Whew! How to prepare for that event portrayed by light which George Will describes as “breathtakingly beautiful and unimaginably violent”?

Although in awe, I don’t claim to understand the complex physics that dates the origin of the universe and describes its expansion and future, nor can I relate personally to the enormous spans of time involved, which are abstractions for me. I simply accept it. But how does this information affect me, if at all? If everything I and mankind have ever contributed on Earth will be eradicated once and for all eventually, even if a long time from now, and if life as we know it will presumably be eradicated someday, it’s remarkable that we take ourselves more seriously than a game we play on our lonely and indifferent planet.

And yet… insight from the Webb telescope into the inconceivable lengths of time and the immense compositions and complexity of the universe, making our transient lives insignificant, do affect me indirectly. While I still strive to reach the limits of my abilities, and I continue to do my best to benefit my family and those who succeed me, and I even care about my legacy (as vain as that may be), I view my life as its own universe that is governed by natural laws, as are the planets and stars and galaxies in the wide universe, which are also extinguished in their own time. What do I personally conclude from all this? That the moments in my universe define eternity for me, as do the moments in individual components of universe define eternity for them. I feel privileged to have my own eternity for even a moment.