Flinging.

I was watching an episode of THE BIG BANG THEORY last night (and yes, I like the show but it's not important to the story), and as I drifted off to sleep (thank you, OTC sleeping pills!) the theme song drifted into my subconscious.

You know that BNL recorded a longer version of the theme, right?

In my youth, among my peers, it was common in the course of group discussions to hear the following phrase: "Boy, Historiclemo, you think too damned much."

Like it's a bad thing.  And perhaps, as a young man you're supposed to think thinly, rather than deeply.  Of course, at that age, I suppose you're supposed to feel thinly, as well, and for those of you that know me, a quick question.....do you think I EVER felt anything but DEEPLY?

Show of hands?

Yup.

Anyway......I was dreaming about the Big Bang.  And when I awoke, a thought occurred to me that has been nagging at me ever since.....

If there was one Big Bang that created the universe, and that eventually the universe will expand as far as it's going to, and then collapse upon itself causing yet another Big Bang....them we must assume that it's happened before.

And in that happenstance, I wonder what THOSE people were thinking about.

I flatter the human race by believing that similar things happened before.  An Earth grew up, and went through all the stuff we currently go through......and perhaps there were variations.  Perhaps they didn't abandon the space program because the Moon was just about as fer as they could go, and went farther.

Perhaps there was great art that inspired the world to unity and peaceful co-existence.

Perhaps the prophets of great power in the long past lived long enough to actually write something down themselves, in the way of explanation.

Perhaps Pluto remained a planet.

But the overall meaning of the deep thought here is that the universe does not begin and end with us.  And time is long and short.  And this is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.  And how you think about yourself and the path of your life and the choices you make have got to be more important that what other people think of your path and your choices.

Because the universe is yours.

And eventually, there will be some schmuck far into the future sitting at a keyboard and writing frivolously about the universe that you lived in while he's living in his own, post Big Bang universe.

Where Pluto probably remains a planet.