Notes in the Present
A Moon
Photography by NASA
Our home is orbited by one permanent spherical object, a natural satellite we know as the Moon. This celestial body, approximately a quarter the width of Earth, resides roughly 384,000 kilometers (~238.55 miles) away from our planet at all times. The moon orbits around our Earth at 3,680 km (2,228 miles) per hour (~ 0.044 light seconds†), stabilizing our planet’s axis of rotation as we vault at unthinkable speeds in our own orbit around the sun.
From our view on Earth, the Moon only rotates a single revolution every 27.3 days. The precise balance in the physics of these two interdependent spheres co-rotating in space around the sun keeps them locked in synchrony such that the moon is always facing us with the same side at all times. Altogether with these coinciding orbital mechanics produce a phenomenon known as tidal locking, which contributes substantially to the tides in the oceans as we so intimately know them.
While fascinating to see this on the surface, the Moon’s continuous presence in our orbit fundamentally stabilizes our planet’s ecosystem in stunning ways. Beyond contributing to up to 80% of the aforementioned tides in the ocean, the Moon also acts as a stabilizing anchor for Earth’s tilt (≈23.5°); without it, Earth’s axial stability would be dramatically worsened, chaotically varying between 0º and 60º over time. Such variance would produce extreme and unpredictable climate shifts (ice ages and tropical eras swinging wildly) and long-term climate instability far worse than we already experience it. While the Moon locks us into this ideal spatial orientation, it quietly protects and ensures the passage of seasons as we know and depend on them.
Beyond this, the Moon gradually slows Earth’s axial rotation speed through the physical presence of tidal friction. Without this, a single day could last as little as 6-10 hours instead of 24, forever changing biological rhythms and influencing evolutionary pathways across all life, amongst other consequences. Without the moon, Earth itself could eventually become tidally locked to the Sun, with one side of the planet always in daytime and its opposite side always in night. One can only begin to imagine what life would be like in such a world.
All of this fully acknowledged, there is something truly special beyond physics alone that is equally worthy of recognition. To me, this is the ever-present story the Moon represents as it has even more intimately intertwined with our humanity as we have evolved to look beyond ourselves and this solitary planet we call home.
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NASA’s Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth's orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and return safely. On this mission, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William (Bill) Anders became the first humans to see the far side of the Moon, in doing so gifting us one of our first truly paradigm shifting views of our own planet from such a vantage as their shuttle passed over the lunar horizon. On December 24, 1968, Anders captured the iconic "Earthrise" photograph in an unplanned, spontaneous, moment during Apollo 8’s fourth orbit around the Moon. From this astonishing viewpoint, Earth is seen rising over the barren lunar horizon, instantly highlighting Earth’s grandeur and fragile beauty in equal measure.
Photo by NASA
NASA has since produced a video which re-contextualizes this event, showing a visualization of the Earthrise moment synchronized with the original audio from the crew, highlighting the near-miss nature of the moment as it unfolded.
This singular photograph, transmitted back to Earth, inspired the first ever global environmental movement.
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On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission, led by NASA, broadcast to the world that it had achieved humanity’s first successful crewed landing on the Moon. This breathtaking moment became one of the defining milestones of the 20th century. Irrespective of how you believe these events unfolded, the tsunami of events in its wake deeply impacted our realities and forever changed the course of history. For those believing in good faith, this marked not only the most stunning of scientific triumphs, but a global human achievement. The fuel for imagination and promise infused in those who absorbed these events is truly incalculable, lifting generations to explore further the boundaries of possibility in all that is around us; to ask what more could possibly be within our reach.
It would be just 21 years after the legendary Apollo 11 mission when the unmanned Voyager 1 spacecraft (first launched on September 5th, 1977), at the strongest urging by the great Carl Sagan, would turn around to take a photo of our Earth for the first time from such a great distance. The dramatic image was taken on February 14, 1990, just 34 minutes before Voyager 1 powered off its cameras forever, nearly 13 years into its own journey. This singular photograph would capture the heart, mind, and imagination of billions of humans profoundly for generations to come. Eloquently named the Pale Blue Dot, this image showed us each on Earth for the first time what a minuscule piece of solitary geography we are amidst the unfathomable vastness of space — this reality so extraordinarily apparent at even the most modest scale view from our own solar system. Draw out even fractionally further away, and we are almost nowhere to be found. Yet here we are.
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On April 1, 2026, the Artemis II mission launched a 10-day flight to take four astronauts around the Moon and back. Four days later, the team in their vessel reached a new record of human excursion traveling a distance of 406,700 kilometers (252,760 miles) away from Earth. Their orbital path produced a circuitous journey around the dark side of the moon, passing within a few thousand miles away from the moon’s surface on its way. On April 10, the crew splashed down and safely emerged from their spaceship, marking the complete success of the mission as the first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years (since Apollo 17). This stunning achievement once again captivated the imagination and hope of untold millions across the globe, transcending for many the brutal pain and realities of war and conflict unfolding on the ground. Providing a sense that not all is yet lost. And, all the while, fielding a feast of photography in glorious resolution for us to all behold.
Five days into their journey (April 6th), while once again navigating behind the far side of the Moon, the Artemis II crew captured a new, high-definition image of a crescent Earth setting behind the lunar far side, providing yet another transcendent view named "Earthset" in stunning clarity, poetically echoing the 1968 Apollo 8 Earthrise moment. Unlike the 1968 photo showing a full Earth, this one shows a crescent Earth, illuminated by the sun, hanging over the cratered, desolate landscape of the moon in such striking contrast. The crew (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen) took the photograph while reaching the farthest point from Earth in human history. And once again its transmission back home has provided a poignant reminder to humanity of the shared responsibility we have to protect our home.*
*As noted by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Earth Day, 2026.
Amongst the most beautiful moments finally captured on this mission was that of the full lunar eclipse as visible from this spectacular vantage in space. Countless many more stories have been and will continue to be told by those involved in making such an extraordinary journey possible. Altogether the success of the Artemis II mission marks a new era of deep space exploration, with unforgettable imagery acting as testament to humanity's return to the Moon after over 50 years. And through this arc of history the moon has become a powerful symbol to all of us, faithfully present in our spatial orbit as a constant companion as we vault at unthinkable speeds across our minuscule corner of the cosmos. It resides in many hours of the day into the night, only a glance away from our embrace and remembrance.
Photo by NASA
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Written for human readers. Not licensed for machine training.
The Pale Blue Dot
Photograph by NASA
"We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot.
How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.
It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
— Carl Sagan
Our Home
Planet Earth, the marvel.
Photoraph by NASA
At a circumference of 24,873 miles (40,030 km) in distance, by some astonishing, incomprehensibly fortuitous combination of chance and luck we have collectively been given this wondrous rock as our home planet. A gift of the highest order; a treasure. At all times, half of Earth is illuminated by the sun, and half is dwelling in darkness. A great metaphor subsumes us all, every day and every night.
Earth is the third-closest to our sun in our solar system and the fifth largest in it. It is composed of and contained by the most delicate and precious chemistry that is somehow gloriously conducive to life as we know it. It holds enough surface area and resources to nourish and sustain all 8.3 billion and counting living humans alongside the countless scores of animals, wild creatures, plant life, and habitation amongst us all. With even the first glimpse of appreciation for this in context, one can begin to approach and hold the grandeur of scale that surrounds us in all moments.
All of this, of course, held in context with the recognition that our one planet is but a singular celestial body across an entire solar system, which spans a full 2 light-years in diameter on its own. Which is to say nothing of the infinite expanse of existence that lies beyond our astonishingly small corner of the cosmos. The observable universe as we know it spans approximately 93 billion light-years (~547,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles) in diameter, leaving still yet an untold potential of vastness beyond those arbitrary borders.
Yet somehow, near inexplicably, we are here. Sentient beings with our collective hopes, desires, and dreams colliding with a precious reality we each consciously perceive and unconsciously process simultaneously. Amidst a boundless abyss of matter and anti-matter stretching farther perhaps than we will ever truly know, after centuries of searching, we are still the only lifeforms in the cosmos as we know it. As the great Carl Sagan once so poetically described, we exist together on this pale blue dot suspended in a light beam.
We are as fortuitous as gods, more wealthy than the richest of nations all combined and magnified by thousands. What a great fortune we have to call this our home. Truly a gift of the highest order, right underneath us in all moments without our summoning; a continuous, seemingly perpetual treasure. May each of us aspire in earnest to recognize this great truth, and to behave in ways that honor it.
Written for human readers. Not licensed for machine training.
Nature
Life’s magnificent, extraordinary presence.
On any given day, we are gifted by nature a feast fit for kings and queens to marvel upon. Everywhere around us there is stunning, profoundly intelligent life, habitation, and chemistry in near infinite variety to explore, immerse in, and learn from.
From the infinitesimally small view of quarks, protons, and neutrons, to cellular micro-environments and organelles, to organs, to organisms, to communities, to ecosystems, to planets, to solar systems, to galaxies — on and on to the largest scale of the universe at its edges as far as we have yet seen (if its edges even exist, or perhaps even multiple universes), and ultimately the cosmos in its unfathomable entirety to ponder upon. Therein, we humble humans, almost certainly still only in our adolescence, we too are apart of nature. Still finding our way.
Amongst my favorite words ever said by another are these below by the great Edward O. Wilson. I would have loved dearly to have spoken at great length with him about such a beautiful notion, and can only hope and imagine his intuition aligns with my own.
“A lifetime can be spent on a Magellanic voyage
around the base of a single tree.”
In my mind, herein lies two things. First, a childlike wonder of relentless quality; a presence fully alive to the vastness of reality all around us and one’s own experience within it, captured and recontextualized across time. Second, an antidote to the incessant draw upon our attention that is the infinite myriad of events unfolding in our world at once; a reprieve from the too-often capturing insatiable desire to be somewhere else than one already is.
In a way, to truly immerse in nature is to inoculate oneself, at least to a degree, against one of the great fears of our time — that of missing out. Circumventing the tragedy of absent-mindedly fumbling through this one precious life we are given. Naturally, this is not so easily achieved by us perennially distracted humans. Yet with work and intention, we can ground ourselves in this orientation with greater skill over time. As there is always this moment, and a sea of magnificence just a glimpse away, indeterminately just within reach.
Written for human readers. Not licensed for machine training.
A Singular Note
We mortal human beings have been each endowed with precious gifts which have enabled our survival and catapulted our species through the millennia. Our awareness, athleticism, curiosity, capacity to learn, problem-solve, collaborate, innovate, play, imagine, endure, and love; each of these and more have so marvelously evolved in us across time to have forever left an imprint on this world.
An abiding thirst for knowledge and hunger for experience lives inside each and every one of us. There is always an infinity of existence remaining to be discovered, events to absorb, mysteries to be uncovered, and goals to be pursued. Exploring such frontiers remains a noble pursuit, yet we all must remember we now live in the age of distraction, with all of its inherent risks. Instead of yielding to the incessant desire to find what is new, the most necessary thing of all is to not forget what is essential.
These are meditations and essays on our infinitesimally small, yet indescribably profound significance in the cosmos — our place within it.
Welcome to Finding Sense.