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I’m trying to learn that I don’t matter. Stars, they matter. Trees matter. Clouds and rain matter more than we realise. Life, such a rarity compared to space, that matters. The heartbeat of a newborn child, oh god, that matters. But me? My life and my thoughts, lost among all the other lives and thoughts of everybody who has ever lived and thought? Hardly. I have a mind that works, but amongst all the other great minds and thinkers, it pales into the background. I have hands that create, but compared to the universe I spend my days in, nothing my hands do will last. I am made of the same composition as my neighbour, of the same atoms and structure as the boy down the street who plays his music too loudly. The same heady mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and other gases fill my lungs as well as they filled the lungs of Ghandi, Einstein, Darwin, Buddha and Jesus Christ, but just as that air flowed out of the mouths of heroes and villains, it flows out of mine, nothing I do can keep it.
And with the breath that so willingly leaves my chest, I learn. I inhale modesty, exhale pretention. Inhale the importance of others; exhale the presumptions that I am more than a speck, anchored to the smallest mote of dust in this wide, wide universe.