The rote on our cosmic insignificance is a couple of millennia old… religious discourses use it as a tool to ensure social order, for the philosopher ‘tis the bedrock of existential thought… the myriad lord almighty are an attempt to ascribe a finiteness to this infinite… it is a thought that is more overwhelming than comforting most of the time, this insignificance, and hence is deliberately suppressed within the rodomontade of evolutionary dominance and socio-economic development…

One can reclaim a sense of this insignificance, and the insecurity it brings, in the wilderness, more specifically where most vegetation respectfully retreats and leaves one rather face-to-face with the elements… the oceans and deserts are bare-bone yet powerful, ruthless symphonies, constantly shifting landscapes that seem to transcend directly from the individual to the infinity… their immensity is characterized by a shapelessness, one guided by the chaotic order of fractals if one takes a bird’s eye view…

From this perspective, mountains take a kinder approach towards instilling insignificance… sojourns to their apex are as daunting as other landscapes, but there a degree of finiteness that they offer… the valley, the ridge, the summit are all approachable, achievable targets… if one is willing to negotiate the troughs, the crests are on offer as the rewards, and even vice-versa… there is gratification tucked in between the undulations that can be dug out through humility…

It is this very insignificance, realized through isolation, that ironically brings one closer to their own brethren… the sense of awe and grandeur inspired by the mountains evokes empathy and realigns the moral compass… watching a human disposition slowly disappear into the mountains makes one feel a part of the natural fabric, an emotion increasingly lost in the throes of modern civilizations where it has become more about observation rather than assimilation… once past the pain of effort, this insignificance offers reconciliation, answers to the riddles lost in the melee of subsistence… the value of existence goes beyond perpetuity, maybe, and with that comfort one saunters carefree across the fields…

Musings on the feeling on insignificance in the mountains…