It’s easy to slip into a geocentric frame of mind. Not on a planetary scale, obviously the Earth isn’t the center of the universe, but what about on a personal scale, on the scale of the individual.
Aren’t I the center of my universe? And isn’t my universe unique, special, without an identical twin?
Astronomy tells a different story. There are galaxies like the Milky Way, galaxies with similar suns and third planets that trace a similar orbit as Earth. Older galaxies, more experienced, who have traveled through perhaps the same waves of history that have shaped – and are shaping – our culture as a planet.
On these distant lands that only The Little Prince has visited, there are deserts (with only one es) and winds and therefore the same barchan dunes that can be found right here at home, in the Arabian Peninsula.
We live on a planet in space with other planets. We’re just another planet.
Sometimes I need to be reminded of this.