Our Place in The Universe

When I was young, my father, a fairly wise man, taught my sister and I a geography lesson that was to stick with me throughout my life, he called it; our place on Earth...

 

He started by saying that we live in a vast thing called the Universe which for all we knew was infinite and unknowable and probably eternal. Leaving us to our thoughts and imaginations about that he directed us immediately to one important part of this massive landscape within our small minds which is our Galaxy, the Milky Way which I liked the sound of immediately. He said that we live within a collection of many stars, which are suns with planets revolving around them, some burning cold and others icy hot: I remember what a strange feeling I had to learn that we were not at the center of our own galaxy but on a spiral arm sort out on the edge. Beginning to feel more lost than found we got to something which began our path home; our solar system which I always believed could have had a grander name.

 

We learned each planet along our journey in an imaginary spacecraft home: Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, then over the crest of our moon we saw our home, Earth. Third Rock from the Sun he would tell us about how conditions on Venus & Mercury the closer planets are much like the Earth was before it cooled. 

 

On Earth he took us from re-entry to our country on the North American Continent, to our state here in Massachusetts, to Boston and all the way to our Living Room. The final purpose being his way of teaching us our home address should we ever get lost; the result for me being that for the rest of my life I would compare everything that ever happened to me against the weight and gravity of my position in the Universe.