Part of the problem is the human inability to think beyond more than short term survival, securing food, shelter, and clothing, working perhaps towards some retirement planning, which in the grand scheme of things, is still very short. It is a combination of our natural heritage as hunter gatherers challenged for survival, and our perceptions which are limited to a range suitable for survival but not broad enough to perceive much or most of the universe. In our modern world, somewhat detached from the natural world, seasonal sports, seasonal movie and TV episodes, quarterly and semi-annual and annualized business reports, cycles of life tend to turn around the short term.

Given a long enough time line, and even then not all that long on a universal scale, and it all ends for everyone. The reality of that awareness can produce some mundane results, but it can also induce some awe inspiring moments as a realization arrives of an individual’s infinitely tiny existence in a seemingly eternal universe. Generations pass, and as the time line extends forwards and backwards through memory and expectations, the beginnings of homo sapiens and the end of homo sapiens become apparent. A trillion years from now our universe may have expanded into a stretched thin nothingness; or perhaps it will contract into an infinitely small undefinable point before bursting forth in another round of existence; or maybe – nothing – forever – a nothing even devoid of time as it is the fourth dimension allowing the physical dimensions to exist and move.

We will never know, but take a shorter timeline, a billion years on, and our technological advances and mathematical physics advances do allow us to understand a bit more of what our universe is all about. The sun and earth, the stars and galaxies, will still exist, but will we, the all inclusive human “we”, still walk this earth? Considering that early life originated on earth some three and a half billion years ago, chances are some form of life will continue to exist. But also considering that homo sapiens, “we” the people, have only been around for an estimated one hundred to three hundred thousand years at most, and that most species have cycles within millions of years or shorter, chances are it will not be human life. Cockroaches will assuredly wander around in the crevices of newer species habitats.