My mind was racing on posting something, anything and a whole range of list was playing in my mind; war criminals (way too serious), love and relationships (too deep), talent versus practice (too academic), and then I chanced upon this out of the world story in Reuters.
Water on Mars sounds like a huge potential for mankind.
I am a lover of comics. Grandpa Tok Wan (Allah bless his soul) helped nurtured my love of reading by buying me a copy of Marvel’s Howard The Duck decades ago while waiting on take a train ride to somewhere (Funnily, I cannot remember this somewhat important bit).
At the time I was about seven, but I have always been a keen reader Рmy uncles and aunties would attest to this; it was their books which took the brunt of my scrawling Рand I took the magazine like (Urgh! Clich̩ alert!) a duck to water.
Comics are the end products of very fertile, imaginative minds. The many wonderful writers, however, do not normally work from a complete vacuum, but tap into the many historical facts, myths, scientific discoveries, social and religions indoctrinations, to craft their fantastic tales that continues to delight even now.
In many of these tales, mankind is able to make the jump to other worlds, in Galaxies far, far away from us. The Mars probe is one small step towards this human potential.
I doubt we would reach this imaginary potential looking at the way we are conducting our lives on earth. We destroy when we can build. Stunt when we can progress. Stop when we can move. There is no telling if the world were to unite towards achieving our potential. What were imaginary 50 years ago are realities today, so do not say that we do not have what it takes to move beyond this much-abused planet of ours.
During my youthful years, I sometimes fantasies being able to travel from one inhabited planet to another, one galaxy to the other. Ever the introvert, I molded my imaginary persona to mimic another Marvel icon, the Planet Ravager, and demigod, Galactus. Unlike the latter, though, my travels were more of learning about each planet rather than siphoning off its energy.
Of course, it never came to my kind that you would need more than huge reserves of energy to be able to make the jump traversing billions of light years.
Those days of fantasy had been replaced with the cold, crushing truth of realities. Sad, but that’s just the way life progresses. You start young and fresh, bristling with energy and enthusiasm, raring to go where no one else has ventured, but doubts will come knocking at every step, compounded with way society reigns it more adventurous recalcitrant.
Sometimes you wonder what would have happened had all those gazillions of cash from all over the world were to be utilized solely for the whole world’s betterment instead of each country’s vested interests.
Whimsical thoughts, isn’t it?
No comments:
Post a Comment