An insignificant thing

By Seoh Bong-seong

Earth is but a small, trifling planet when seen among the innumerable stars and planets in the universe.

To us, though, it seems nothing less than beautiful and fantastic. On this small globe, when any one of us reaches a goal as planned, we feel jubilant, while those who fail to reach their dreams sigh desperately, thinking that there is nowhere for their lives to go. Should we change our focus from our home planet and instead focus on the sky? When we look there, our struggles seem much less important.

We usually think of the sun as the only one of its kind in the heavens but we now know there is an infinite number of them, so distant that they can’t be seen through helioscopes. They may appear solid but we know they are burning spheres of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen or helium.

In his world-renowned book “Cosmos,” Carl Sagan said, “Stars and planets are also born and disappear like humans do. A human usually lives for no more than 100 years, but the lifetime of planets and stars are unaccountably long. Compared with them, a human’s lifetime is similar to a dayfly’s.”

It’s also interesting to note that our five fingers evolved from the five-fin bone of a fish that flourished during the Devonian period. In other words, that fish is humans’ real ancestor. And it’s because we have five fingers that we developed and use the decimal system. Otherwise, we might have used a system based on the number eight or twelve.

Approximately three billion years ago, microscopic life arrived on this planet. Plants, fish, ferns, needle-leaf trees, reptiles, and finally dinosaurs appeared 150 million years ago. The first mammals then emerged about 50 million years ago. Finally, the first ancestors of modern man were seen around 5 million years ago.

Humans often proudly think that we have conquered all the other creatures. But, we actually arrived much later than fish and reptiles. Our ancestors did, however, evolve to leave the water and take to the trees. After that, they descended to the ground and eventually became modern humans.

Under the frontal lobes in our brains is a primitive cerebrum. While the frontal lobe controls judgment, emotion and thought, the cerebrum still stimulates instinct as it did countless generations ago.

Modern technological civilization has progressed considerably, and humans have become unexpectedly smarter through various types of education. But some of us still commit unique, incomprehensible crimes, and even “intellectuals” resort to behavior similar to that of uncontrollable wild animals. These situations occur because of the abrupt reactions caused by our primitive cerebrums.

Humans, who were originally born poor and lived short lives, sometimes don’t even realize their own misbehavior.

So, it seems to me that this world may end quite soon due to the deeds of many stupid people. It’s like man is falling into a trap set by himself. In many cases, people ruin their lives while only chasing money. Others follow powerful people in order to gain more honor.

Mother Theresa said, "Life is like staying overnight at a strange inn." Li Bo, a famous poet from the Tang Dynasty in China said, "Life is the place to sleep one night before returning to one’s pre-birth hometown."

There are no pockets in a shroud.

We came to the earth with nothing, and we will leave this small global village without much ado and with nothing in our hands. So, why are we constantly greedy for material goods and never satisfied with what we already have?

The writer is a professor of the Department of Chinese Language and Culture at Jeju International University. His email address is benseoh@naver.com.