When I feel as if I am under-appreciated and under-read or I am pining for whatever external validation I might be seeking today for the work that I do as a writer, I think of the Voyager.
It was a NASA mission whose explicit objective was to photograph objects in the outer solar system. And it was packed with things about Earth in the hope that it may get discovered by someone in outer space.
Think about it. In the first place, this mission was audacious to the extent of wanting to travel to the outer echelons of the solar system that no vehicle had gone earlier. And it wanted to basically discover how things looked like there. An audacious goal, no doubt.
But the second part was even more audacious, and perhaps a bit romantic too.
It should provide solace to any writer who feels like his work is not discovered.
The Voyager actually hoped that it might be discovered. In the haystack of unending space, it not only hoped but planned to be the needle that might get discovered.
To that end, not only did the scientists hope and plan, but they actually acted.
The Voyager contained a bunch of stuff on board just in case it was actually discovered. It contained a capsule of humanity, so to speak.
It contained greetings in fifty odd human languages, some animal greetings from whales and such, a bunch of images of life on Earth, and even a sample of sounds on Earth from oceans to volcanoes to even Bach and folk songs.
Come to think of it – if that isn’t hope of being discovered, I don’t know what is.
With those miniscule probabilities of discovery, if the Voyager mission could load itself with stuff, just in case, what stops a writer from preparing for the discovery of his or her work?
That is as far as inspiration for continuing to create goes.
But there was another wonderful part of this Voyager mission.
And that is to be remembered if at any time one feels too puffed up about what one does. It is to be kept in mind when one has a bout of unnecessary self-importance.
That wonderful part will help you gain perspective. For that perspective, we must thank Carl Sagan who forced the last photograph from Voyager.
It did turn out that the mission was successful in taking and sending photographs of Jupiter, its moons, Neptune and even Uranus as it traversed to the outer boundaries of the solar system.
Almost as a poetic effect, Carl Sagan forced the Voyager to turn around and take one last photograph of the Earth – from over 6 billion KM in space.
That photograph – a faint blue pixel representing the earth, eminently insignificant in a large sunbeam in space – became immortal as the Pale Blue Dot.
It is a timeless reminder that everything we have ever seen, done, lived, loved or imagined has been experienced on what is, after all, in the vast unending chasm of space, just a Pale Blue Dot. Google for a Pale Blue Dot to see that photograph.
Seeing it is enough to evaporate any idea of self-importance that one might be deluding oneself with.
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