Do you ever feel like sometimes you need a little jolt? What kind of nudge from the universe do you get that brings you into the present moment? Do you ever run across something that gives you perspective and helps you take the big picture view?

Sometimes a counter-intuitive take on a long held idea can be the catalyst for a new way of thinking about things. These thoughts all arise from an interesting experience I had recently. I was listening to one of the weekend shows on NPR, I think it might’ve been Radiolab or Freakonomics. They had some scientist guy on that was explaining something that I thought I knew about.

You’ve probably heard about the fact that there was a giant meteor that hit the earth a long time ago that put an end to the age of the dinosaurs. The way that story is usually told has the sky going dark with all of the ash from the collision and the dinosaurs and everything else slowly dying out over a long period of time because the earth got so cold.

Well, according to this guy, that’s not the way it happened at all. This giant rock traveling at 20,000 miles an hour or more was roughly the size of Manhattan or Mount Everest. When it hit, it would’ve ejected a huge stream of plasma out past the atmosphere that would’ve spread out all around the earth before being pulled back down by gravity in the form of superheated drops of something like glass. Most of which would’ve burned up in the atmosphere, some would have made it through to pelt back down onto the ground.

A dinosaur looking up would seen a sky filled with shooting stars, and a clear view out into the darkness of space in the middle of the day. But here’s where the story differs from the idea that it would have gradually gotten cold and eventually the dinosaurs went extinct.

This guy was saying that all those little droplets of molten glass would have heated up the atmosphere all at once and that within two hours the entire surface of the earth would’ve been hotter than a pizza oven, over 1000° for at least a few hours.

In that scenario, virtually every critter on the surface that wasn’t hiding deep in a cave would have literally been toast in a matter of minutes.

And apparently, that’s more or less what the geological record shows. Up to a certain point there are fossils, and then there is the small black band of ash and these glassy little droplets of the meteor, and then no more fossils for a long time.

Just think of it! The dinosaurs ruled the earth for hundreds of millions of years and then it was over literally in a flash. Poof! Up in smoke! Calamity on a cosmic scale!

One’s mind immediately thinks “Gee whiz, that could be us!” Which, in my case, led to the aha moment. Because if, in fact, our entire existence is so ephemerally tenuous, then one should be making the very most out of the moment one happens to be in!

If indeed, a random meteor could fry us like a flatbread faster than you can say fricassee, then shouldn’t we be approaching the task at hand, whatever it may happen to be, with love and gratitude and appreciation?

We are gifted such a short span as it is here on our big blue marble, that making the most of every moment should be our default mode, although as anyone knows it often isn’t.

I found myself chuckling with the irony of it. I felt strangely comforted by this newfound knowledge. I look at anything that can amp up my gratitude for my present moment experience as a good thing.

Because if there’s one thing I have noticed to hold true over the years it’s that the best way to create good luck for yourself down the road somewhere is to be grateful and appreciative (or at the very least accepting) about whatever is happening in the right here and now.

Much love, and may you enjoy your moments until next Monday!

M+

Mark Metz
Director of the Dance First Association
Publisher of Conscious Dancer Magazine