Hello there. If you are seeing this, you are likely stressed out by the situation that you are in or the circumstances that surround you. Here, you will gain perspective on how important those problems really are. Currently, you are probably living in a confined space, a house or apartment if you will, a place where you can live your regular life and a place you can call home. This area likely belongs to a larger community, a neighborhood, block, or some other communal living area. Your stress may be related to the inner happenings of this community, the people there, or the conditions you are in. Now, if we zoom out even more, this area likely belongs to a town or city. Your stress may be related to your school in this location, certain competitions in this location, or something completely unrelated. Know that this is fine and completely normal, as this stress pertains to things that likely directly affect you. Now if we broaden our scope a little more, you are likely living in some sort of province or state. In this view, your stress may come from more large-scale occurrences like state policy, economics, or general problems. In fact, that stress could be coming from the country you live in, which may be going through wars, humanitarian crises, or economic depression. It is completely normal to worry about things at a scale beyond your local scope because of how that unimaginable and intangible thing can eventually affect you and millions of other people. However, we can broaden the scope to something beyond the lense of human organization and something that in fact organizes us -- the whole of earth. One of the largest forms of human classification geographically (continents) each individually only make up a fraction of the total earth. There are around 7 billion people on this planet, and you are only 1 of them. Now, let’s zoom out, crossing into the realm of space. The earth that humans live in, makes up around 0.0003% of the total mass in the solar system, which includes planets like Jupiter and a star like the Sun. The solar system has an estimated radius of around 2 light years. Just for perspective, light takes around 7 seconds to travel around the earth. Let’s zoom out 1 more level, to the milky way galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across and has around 400 billion stars. In fact, there are around 40 billion Earth-sized planets that are in habitable zones in the milky way galaxy, according to the kepler space tube. Each one of those planets could theoretically contain the continent you live on, the country you are a part of, the state you are in, the town you reside in, your neighborhood, your home, and last of all -- you. So always remember that this universe is vast, and you are never alone here. You are simply a spec in the grand workings of this universe, so just know that whatever test you have at school, whatever competition you are about to do, whatever confession you are about to make, or whatever difficult situation you are in is not as universe altering as it may seem. So act with confidence, knowing that the way you live should be personalized to you and not the rest of the universe. Because the universe will go on and nothing will change that.
