As a physician, our entire body is literally like a miracle to me… and the fact that all of it, almost every bit of it, comes from cosmic dust and stars — it’s so damn magical. We are wearing solid, tangible bodies — I love the term earth suits — and we run a life spark through that body that brings the elements of stardust to life.
Researchers estimate that we are approximately 97% stardust, formed over 13 billion years ago. Scientists used infrared spectrography to survey almost 200,000 stars and found that 97% of the same elements that make up human life make up the entire Milky Way galaxy.
So now I have taken to calling our incredibly human bodies star suits instead of earth suits.
“We are now able to map the abundance of all of the major elements found in the human body across hundreds of thousands of stars in our Milky Way,” said Jennifer Johnson, chair of the SDSS-III APOGEE survey and a professor at The Ohio State University, in a public statement on the research.
Now think of us all wearing our star suits and living together on one precious little planet, spinning through the cosmos together. You are having a conscious experience full of meaning and feeling and using it to interact with other star dust humans on a rock in space.
Do you see the very tiny little dot in the middle of the sunbeam? That’s the earth, spinning in a sunbeam. That is what we are on right now.
This famous photograph of the earth was first taken by NASA on Valentine’s Day: Feb 14, 1990. It tells a beautiful love story of how we are all connected, all together on this teeny tiny planet in space.
It reminds us to pan out, see the bigger picture, remember that the stressors of our one situation, our one spot on the planet, our one lifetime is part of a way bigger picture where we are spinning through space all together on the same beautiful but delicate planet.
In Carl Sagan’s book “The Pale Blue Dot” [Random House, 1994] he wrote:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam….”
“…It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 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 with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
With newer digital technology the pale blue dot picture was revisited and is now most commonly seen this way… and as with the first photograph, we are on that tiny little dot in the middle of the closest sunbeam:
Which version of the image do you like better?
I love both photographs and the quote so very much that I wanted to paint it — in a way that blended my favorite elements of both photographs together as well as make the earth more clearly visible — so that we could see all the continents, the waters, the nighttime of half the world and the daytime half, all connected on one planet spinning through the mystery of space.
Here is how I painted it:
1. Using blue, indigo and violet paints, I made a textured, dimensional background:
2. Then I added white in a swirl, to get the energy of the sun moving through space:
3. Then I blended it out a bit:
4. Then I added the ray of light from the sun, as well as my interpretation of space, with millions of stars and galaxies twinkling endlessly into oblivion, to remind you that you are wearing a star suit right now:
5. I then sketched in the planet spinning on it’s side in the sunbeam, so that half of the planet will be in daylight and half in the nighttime darkness:
6. Then I painted that in and added cloud swirls for the atmosphere and rays of the sunbeam surrounding our planet completely:
7. Then I signed the corner and put three coats of archival varnish on it!
Here is the final result:
If you need a reminder to pan out, see the bigger picture, stress less, enjoy more, stay in the present moment, and remember the larger community of humanity all in the same place and same time in the same majestic universe…. this artwork is your reminder.
The original painting is on a 16″ x 20″ deep gallery wrapped canvas (I painted the sides so it would not require a frame) and I used beautiful iridescent paint for the rays of sunshine that envelop our planet. Those rays glisten on the canvas — you can see the blue and purple iridescent nature of the paint in pictures where I have angled the canvas a bit:
I then made prints of this artwork, both without the quote as well as with the first part of Carl Sagan’s quote on it, in two different styles:
I couldn’t decide which I liked more so I decided to offer both versions of the quote. Which one is your favorite? For more information on the original painting and the prints, hop over here.
To being centered in the present moment while you spin through space with me…
xoxo, Laura Koniver MD
