Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

"… but some sage once pointed out quite rightly that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

The world we live in is conditioned to emulate extremes. We delight in the most beautiful, the tallest, the largest, the richest, the brightest, the fastest and anything else you can think of, as well as pay attention to extremes at the opposite end of the spectrum: the ugliest, the shortest, the smallest, the poorest, the darkest, the slowest. You get the idea.

We’re conditioned to pay no mind to the ordinary, the middle ground, the average run-of-the-mill, the shades of gray, the humdrum of everyday life or the predictably dull and boring.

The heroes and heroines made immortal in books and movies were extraordinary characters. We do not particularly care for bland characters who live lives of quiet desperation. We want to live vicariously through the lives of characters who are defiantly shaking their fists at the gods and beating all odds. We are tempted to look at movie stars, fat cats and other luminaries who dare defy conventions basking in the public limelight pursued by TMZ cameras as people worthy of awe and respect. And if you let it, a tiny tinge of envy gnaws at our souls when you see their images commanding megabucks. They appear as titans walking among ants. Granted a select few of them deserve the attention we give them but most can be reduced to fodder for the gristmill of entertainment. The truth is, those who deserve our awe and respect are the ones who orbit our daily life.

Perhaps we need to look at another firmament to gain a genuine and lifelong perspective of celebrating what is ordinary, of celebrating you and I and everyone of us, mere mortals cut from the average cloth, who have to get up every single day to slay our dragons with our rusty sword and trusty steed, that is, after we’ve gulped down our java and said our prayers.

Look to the stars in the true celestial firmament, to gain a soul-searing appreciation and even love and respect for our tiny place in the universe. Nature is a great teacher. A layman’s appreciation of astronomy and cosmology teaches us that there is every reason to celebrate the ordinary.

Our own sun is an ordinary, average, ho-hum star shining steadily in the suburbs of the center of the Milky Way (what Sagan termed as the boondocks, from the Tagalog word "bundok" meaning mountain but extended to mean far from the core). In the hierarchy of stars, our own sun is a lowly commoner and it is located a third of the way from the center where a black hole exists, according to educated guesses by scientists. This black hole is sucking in, like the drain in your kitchen sink, all the brightest stars within its vicinity. The biggest, brightest stars in our galaxy are energy guzzlers and therefore, have short lives, about half the life span of our solar system, and thus cannot support planets that need a longer span of time to support the existence and development of thinking, feeling beings such as our home planet.