About 4.5 billion years ago, the miscellaneous material orbiting a
star at the edge of the Milky Way coalesced into a planet that we call
Earth. It took another billion years—a thousand million years—before
it cooled enough for life’s self-replicating biochemical processes
would flourish in the primeval stew of the oceans. Another billion
years was required before multicellular organisms would evolve. Not
until about 500 million years ago did fungi and plants appear on the
land that had risen out of the oceans. Insects evolved in this
terrestrial ecology. Then 100 million years was required for some
marine animals to transition to the continents on their long and
convoluted journey from simplicity to complexity. Thus began the magic
of life and death that has alternated between the prolific and the
extinct throughout the subsequent eons of history. We, as a distinct
species, evolved as Homo sapiens only about 200,000 years ago.

When we consider these 200,000 years, most of it was spent in Africa
as primitive hunter-gatherers. Only 70,000 years ago did we venture to
other continents, and only 12,000 years ago did we find a few select
places where we could begin a revolutionary project called
agriculture. This allowed our population densities to increase
100-fold. The few million hunter-gatherers who were dispersed around
the planet slowly increased in numbers. But another 7,000 years was
required to form those ephemeral structures that we so proudly call
civilizations, great accomplishments that have always been humbled by
the vagaries of famines, pandemics and human failings. Only in the
last 200 years have our numbers soared from 1 billion to 8 billion, a
measure of success to give us the impression that the past has nothing
to teach us about the present.

Of course, we accept the validity of this cosmological, geological and
anthropological information because it is what science tells us.
Although it is understood intellectually, it does not penetrate to the
deeply personal and existential level. This emotional indifference to
the past can be best explained by the speed and the intensity of the
present. Change is occurring faster than our ability to process its
meaning—the enchantment of the frenetic pace at which we function is
wholly consuming. The power and excitement of the immediate is too
alluring to reflect on where we have been or where we are going. We
are not inclined to pause and consider the possibility that we are on
a trajectory of disaster. So we enter the exhilaration of an unfolding
progress and are carried by its endless promises. At our present rate
of change, centuries have no meaning and millennia are unimaginable.
The now is so engrossing and enthralling that it has obliterated the
past. Metaphorically, we have reached escape velocity and are
propelling ourselves into an orbit of the unpredictable and the
unknown. Re-entry, when it inevitably comes, will be a burning
experience of charred illusions. Meanwhile, we are living in a milieu
of moments measured by the increment of seconds.

This measure of time prevents us from understanding ourselves and the
significance of who we are, where we are, and what we are doing.
Without an awareness of the context of history, we flounder in the
mesmerizing spell of the present without a sense of direction. It
helps to remember that we are a species that is only 200,000 years
old. Ants have been here 800 times longer than we have been. Turtles,
1,200 times longer, and fungi, about 4,500 times longer. If the entire
history of Earth were represented by a 24-hour day, our existence as a
species would constitute the last 1.6 seconds. Our proud history of
civilizations would register only 0.05 seconds, and the technological
culture that has so entranced us with its ingenuity and creativity
would be too brief to discern.

Within this indiscernible measure of brevity is the drama of our
lives. The seconds turn into minutes and hours, then days and years.
People are born and die, generations pass, values collide, economies
struggle, and cultures clash. And in the resulting turmoil, we each
experience the personal spectacle of this human theatre with the one
brief ticket that has been allotted by chance.

This passage of time and change are important for they have their way
of clarifying each moment with an urgency that is too overwhelming for
us to process. Every second counts. About 2.5 billion of them
constitute a human lifetime. A trillion was 31,700 years ago, when our
restless Homo sapiens species had just wandered to the western fringes
of Europe. With such numbers, everything and nothing become each
other. And somewhere in the unfolding of each impossible moment is the
guidance for what we might do and what we will become.

The smallest of things will accumulate into the greatest of things.
Enough vital cells will make a living body. Enough water drops will
make a mighty ocean. Enough individual trees will make a vast forest.
Enough burning will despoil an entire sky. So moment by moment, when
we are not attentive to what we are doing and where we are going, this
is how our proud and complex accomplishments can be dismantled, how
essential ecologies can be destroyed, and how a whole world can be
unalterably changed.

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra