Stardust At the Center of the Universe

We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

-Joni Mitchell

I have been watching the PBS series, Genius with Stephen Hawking (Link) the past few weeks. It is an intriguing series exploring BIG QUESTIONS with Hawking as the narrator and guide. He directs 3 everyday people volunteers to come up with answers to these questions in interesting ways. It is all fairly straight-forward science but explained in different ways

Episode 4 the other evening was looking at the question, "Where did the universe come from?" He began by helping them get a good guesstimate of how many galaxies (not just stars) there are in the universe. (At least 250,000,000,000!) He then introduced them to the Doppler Effect and red-shift which discovered that all galaxies (in all directions) are "moving away" from us. With an ingenious use of hockey players and expanding balloons he had them illustrate how and why the galaxies that are farther away are "moving" away faster than those close to us. It also showed that, in essence the galaxies are not "moving away" but rather the space between galaxies is expanding. (Don't even try to wrap your head around that one. There's more....)

Finally with the use of tiny lights on two screens he blew my mind.

In summary he showed that depending on how you moved the screens to show the direction from which we have come, whatever galaxy you used to line it up became the center of the Big Bang. Let me state that a little differently:

• Everything is the center of the universe.
• Everything is the origin of where we came from.

Huh?

My first thought was simply,

So! I really am the center of the universe!

Which morphed into,

And so is every person, place, and thing in the universe!

Whoa!

All of us started in that infinitely small and infinitely dense singularity that became the Big Bang. Every molecule, atom, whatever, was contained in that moment. All the matter and energy that exists today has existed since the beginning of the universe and was present at the beginning of the universe.

Everything, Hawking led us to understand therefore, is the center of where everything began.

More metaphorically, as Joni Mitchell wrote in 1969, we are stardust. Literally!

The "stardust" and "billion-year old carbon" that was and is the center of the universe.

No, I cannot grasp that concept very well. I can accept it, knowing that in another 50 years (or less) someone may come up with a completely new description of it. For today I simply sit in awe of the thinkers who can formulate these ideas as well as the infinite wonder, beauty, complexity, and simplicity of the universe.

I Hate Must-Watch TV

Well, hate is a big word. I am frustrated by it because I dislike being hooked by The Tube. But I also am not very good at binge-watching such as a whole season on Netflix or Apple TV.

Unfortunately that doesn't keep me from getting trapped, hooked, reeled-in. It started back with Roots, I, Claudius, and Henry VIII series in the 70s. These mini-series productions forced me to be home and watching TV. Ken Burns' documentary series productions have been absolutely must-watch. Sherlock and Wolf Hall have been similar in recent years on PBS. Downton Abbey didn't do it to me. I could take it or leave it- my world wasn't over if I missed it. (I hear via PBS that the BBC has started filming Sherlock, Season 4. It should be a few months until it airs. Good. I can escape must-watch for a while. Yeah, right!)

In any case, AMC has done it now with The Night Manager, the British import of a John Le Carre novel starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. It is a well-produced and directed spy thriller that is over-the-top in quality and tension. Hiddleston's Jonathan Pine is an enigma wrapped in charm. Laurie's Roper is just plain creepy. Laurie is showing acting chops that makes it all the more surprising that he spent all that time doing comedy. He is remarkable.

As in any good spy thriller movie or Le Carre novel tension can build slowly, have a brief moment of explosion, then settle back into quiet only to build again. In the first episode I found myself getting bored with the pace, even though I know Le Carre's style. When the explosive scenes occurred I turned to my wife and said, "Well, I'm hooked."

I sat entranced on Tuesday with the incredibly horrendous scenes of a show of force armaments party in the desert. My wife was having great difficulty watching. I asked her why she responds to this like that when all the TV shows she likes almost always have murder and mayhem? "Those are cartoons," she responded. "This is great acting!"

I have tried very hard to resist The Night Manager. I (intentionally) missed the first ten minutes of week 4. I tried surfing on the computer while it was on. Nothing has worked. I have been hooked by Le Carre, Hiddelston, and mostly Laurie. They know how to make it work. They drive me crazy because I dislike being shackled to the TV schedule. But I WILL be there next week to see how they bring all this to a conclusion. I know anything can happen and that "happy endings" are not necessarily part of Le Carre's style.  But I will be satisfied by a remarkable series.

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A note about this past Tuesday's show of force in the desert episode. I was reminded, in the very best ways, of what I still consider the best TV series ever- M*A*S*H. Take M*A*S*H's set and drop it in the midst of the Afghan desert. Make Frank Burns less odd and more cunning. Add lots of sinister to Alan Alda's Hawkeye. Then take away all the comedy and replace it with reality. The insanity of war that was at the heart of M*A*SH will explode into intense and horrendous color. There was even this grotesque scene of Hugh Laurie's Roper hitting golf balls in the desert while wearing a bathrobe and combat boots. M*A*S*H modernized for the 21st Century.

The Power of Personality- Or More?

This past week was The Roosevelt Week- the 14 hour documentary on Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, arguably three people who did more to change the American way of life than just about anybody in the 20th Century. I sat through the whole series shaking my head in awe, mouth open in amazement or just plain dumbstruck. First, of course, by the remarkable film making of Ken Burns and the writing of Geoffrey Ward. They have developed such a remarkable style over these past 30+ years that their work engages, teaches, and entertains you. There were pictures and films that have probably not seen the light of day in decades.

Just as amazing was also the three "stars" of the show and their story. As a fan of American history I devoured all these newly revealed facts and stories as well as all the old familiar ones since now they had a new twist- we could watch them and put them into historical perspective. Several things stood out as part of the secret of their incredible success in what they did.

In one of the segments, Geoff Ward described the impact that FDR had on people. Ward talked about the fact that a number of people said that Franklin Roosevelt would stand to greet them when they entered the Oval Office. In reality, he never rose to greet anyone. Ever. As we all know, FDR was paralyzed by polio at age 39 and never stood on his own again. It was impossible for him to stand and greet anyone at any time. Yet, Ward explained, it was the force of his personality that people imagined him able to do more than he could. His presence was so real and so large.

The same was said of Teddy Roosevelt. One person described being in the room with TR and then feeling like he had to "wring the personality from his clothes" since it was so overwhelming. Eleanor, considering her role as a woman in a very male-dominated world, may have been even more powerful than the two of them. She won over generals in the south Pacific war zone by her presence and dedication when she went on an exploratory visit.

Some of their personality strength came from the families they grew up in. But that is one of those correlation or causation questions. Other members of their families were far less able to overcome the demons they were afflicted by. Alcoholism ran through the whole Roosevelt clan. (Eleanor was TR's niece and FDR was a 5th cousin to TR.) Illness and depression plagued them, including the three of them as well. They all had complicated relationships with parents as well as their own children. They were, in spite of their much-larger-than-life personalities, very human.

Somehow we also want to make something of the fact that all three, as well as many other people of big egos, ambitions and personalities, had to overcome some significant issue. TR was plagued by asthma as a child, yet became this incredible outdoorsman, pushing everyone around him to greater acts of strength and (sometimes foolish) bravery. His first wife and mother both died on the same day. FDR was stricken by polio and all his future seemed lost. I never thought about how devastating polio was. My generation was the first to get the polio vaccines that have conquered what was a dreadful disease. Yet FDR campaigned as tirelessly as any candidate ever has- or will. Eleanor was looking for unconditional live and acceptance lost from her own parents. FDR was unfaithful to her- and she knew some of it. Yet she chaired the newly formed United Nations first committee that wrote the International Declaration of Human Rights- and became the only individual ever to receive a standing ovation from the UN General Assembly when it passed.

Yes, it may very well be that the ability to overcome such incredible obstacles and adversity played a big part on who they became and what they were able to accomplish. Yet others faced with similar or even lesser problems fail to thrive. What is it then that allows some to excel under such circumstances and others to fail? Why does one person who loses love and support crawl into their own oblivion and fail to thrive while another member of the family becomes president? The great Viktor Frankl wrote following World War II that a sense of meaning and purpose of one's life is what helped many prisoners of Nazi concentration camps survive. His Man's Search for Meaning is still one of the most important books in the field over 60 years later. He has a number of quotes that resonante:

• When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
• Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
• A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".

But these, too, beg the question, why do some people, or how do some people, manage to maintain that sense of meaning or hope, purpose or love when everything around seems to be taking all that away? Frankl, and others, will here point to a sense of spirituality or the spiritual. Yet there are many who don't have that sense or are unable to experience whatever it may be.

Perhaps, then, all that we can do as individuals, family members, colleagues, friends,  therapists or fellow human beings, is hold up the possibilities for meaning and purpose. Perhaps what our tasks are is to be there when people face the adversity of their situation and be present with them, non-judgmentally, compassionately, and with a sense that there may be something greater than ourselves that will get us through.

Seems kind of weak and hopeless, I know. How can such stand up to things like the Holocaust, war, racism, debilitating illness? I don't know the answer to the "How?" but people like the Roosevelts and Frankl remind me that it isn't impossible.