I was at a conference in Denver last year and saw a headline in the local newspaper that said astronomers had determined conclusively that the nearest galaxy to ours, the Andromeda galaxy, is on a collision course with our very own Milky Way. There’s no way around it. It will be catastrophic, cataclysmic. Andromeda definitely will collide with the Milky Way… in four billion years.

The good news is that our solar system, our tiny little corner of the galaxy won’t be impacted by the collision until about two billion years after the initial impact. So, we’ve only got six billion years.

Need perspective? Think big picture. Really big picture. While pondering the scale of galaxies and the mind-boggling expanse of time and space may make you feel small and insignificant, our smallness and our life’s brevity are reality. But how amazing is it that we are a part – and a conscious, intelligent, aware part – of such a grand, awesome, beautiful universe?

Pause and reflect regularly on the wonder of it all. Look up. Look closely at the mysteries that surround us, from the blade of grass underfoot to the galaxies spinning far beyond. Be wowed by all that is and that anything is at all.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” -Albert Einstein