The first epiphany I'd like to share is one I had a while back on a bus ride from Lima to Cuzco in Peru. Crossing up into the Andes mountains in the middle of the night, the night sky was absolutely incredible. A sight like that puts everything into context, and it was then I realized just how big and complex our world is.
My journey to this realization had begun a week or so earlier when I visited the Iguassu Falls in Brazil and Argentina. My friend whom I was travelling with had earlier asked me to compare my experience of Iguassu with my earlier visit to Niagara Falls and Angel Falls years before, to decide which waterfall was the most impressive. Unbeknownst to both of us he had thus primed my mind to make a connection between the two waterfalls that would later result in my epiphany up in the Andes. The connection was established later that same day after our visit to El Gargante del Diablo, the single most impressive waterfall of Iguassu. Staring into the huge watermasses plummeting down the Devil's Throat, I did think of Niagara Falls to determine which were more impressive. In doing so it suddenly occurred to me that at that very moment while I was looking at the water of Gargante del Diablo, the watermasses I had witnessed in Niagara was still running in all its impressive grandeur as when I visited. Walking back a Brazilian guy who lived in our hostel asked me an apt and great question: "Did you have any philosophical thoughts while looking at the waterfall?" Through his question I realized that I had actually had an enlightenment of sorts, that a place I visited years ago is still the same as when I visited and what went on that day is still going on today with new visitors receiving the same impressions I did when I visited. It wasn't until the aforementioned bus ride however that I put the thought into perspective. Looking at the night sky over the Andes mountains I realized that all the places I had ever been to was still there as living and vibrant as when I was there. I guess I had just lived in an "out of sight, out of mind" state not really realizing how much stuff is actually going on at any given time in the world. It's like your mind creates a world out of the places you have actually physically visited, whereas when you only here about a place you only have an abstract idea of what that place is like. There fore the more places you go to, the more places you explore, the larger your own personal concept of the world becomes. I guess that is also why it took me a while to get to this realization, as I have now been to 17 % of the world (at least according to one of my Facebook apps) and has thus stacked up a great arsenal of actual places in my own personal world, making me realize the vastness of the globe. Every single place I have ever been regardless of when I went, is still there right now at this very moment, being explored or revisited by others or maybe enjoying peaceful seclusion waiting to be re-explored. Once you realize this, I mean really think about it, it really puts existence into context and lets you appreciate the size of our world. Looking at the night sky in addition made me realize how many empty spaces are out there in the universe, actually existing right now even though not a single person on this planet has ever been there. Looking at the stars always puts things into perspective for me, and never more so than on that night in Peru.
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