Stargazing

The gift that keeps on giving. Mankind has always been on the quest of a mythical gift that keeps giving riches, since the dawn of civilization. Needless to say, homosapiens, with their unique ability of collective imagination, the very same idiosyncratic element that catapulted them to the top of the food-chain, started weaving tales of such a legendary gift like a mulberry worm weaving its finest silk . Legends spun across civilizations tantamount to this. The Philosopher's stone, the Elixir of Life, the Akshaya Patra, Kamadhenu in Indian mythology, Midas from the land across the Aegean sea are a few of those. The riches need not necessarily be hedonistic. It could take various forms like truth, knowledge, the true form of nature to name a few. No question has baffled us more than the one of how our universe works? We have, at the most, made a few dots in the right direction in this quest, only in the last couple of centuries, through the brilliance of a few men like Newton and Einstein. Yet, there is still so much of the universe unexplained that what we know is a handful of sand picked up on a vast beach.

But how did it all begin? When did we start to ponder about such ethereal concepts? When did we get enough time to realize there's the most intricate labyrinth lying above us waiting for us to solve it? Oh it's when we turned our heads away from the mundane trivialities of everyday survival. It was when we lifted our heads up and looked above. We did stare long and many a time. The blue sky in the day and the endless darkness at night stared back at us. We noticed the big silvery white orb moving across our heads playing hide and seek once a fortnight. Then we found the planets and the stars. Though it took us thousands of years to figure out who these wanderers in space really where, the real gift of this intriguing process, guided by the beacon of curiosity, was, the questioning mind.

Every other moment, our heads were stuck too deep in day to day life like ostriches with their heads in sand. It was only when we looked up, we could contemplate on how it all began with a big bang out of nothingness. Various civilizations came up with their own theories which were purported to be the truth at those times. Those supposedly true 'theories' gave rise to an astounding pantheon of gods across ages. It didn't really matter if those theories would eventually turn into myths over the passage of time and advancement in human civilization. The process led to the development of creative imagination in man, which would eventually sow the seeds of modern science centuries later. It led us along the path of understanding the true meaning of Nature, which in essence is the meaning of life. Without doubt the ultimate truth of life has to be the most precious gift ever. It all began when man gazed at the stars. 

Truly then, stargazing has been the gift that keeps on giving.