Brief Thoughts on Seeing The Grand Canyon
Or, The Reports of Human Insignificance are Greatly Exaggerated
Last year around this time I went to see the Grand Canyon. Google Photos resurfaced the memory. I remember being deeply affected by the immensity around me, and I will never forget the sunset I saw there. I jotted down some thoughts in my diary. Here they are.
When you see the rays of the setting sun slowly sweeping these striations that took literally millions of years to be carved by the combined scalpels of flowing water, blowing air, and snaking tectonic plates, you realize with awe that the name Grand Canyon is not a classic American hyperbole.
In fact, the name might be an understatement. Depending on which layer you're talking about, the age of this majestic, massive geological sculpture — still being imperceptibly carved — ranges from 2 million years to 2 billion years.
To put that into perspective: 2 million years is ten times the time us modern humans have existed. 2 billion years is nearly half the age of our great planet. Unfathomable is the depth of this canyon at first sight, unfathomable are the eons it took to carve it when you think more about what you are seeing.
There are two ways to feel in the face of the immensity of the world contrasted with the limitations of being human. The fashionable thing is to harp on about human insignificance. But that worldview has a big blind spot right at its center.
The fact that small creatures such as we, small both in space and time, are able to wield enough explanatory power to demystify the formation of the Grand Canyon through application of intellectual rigor and while fighting existential dread, is what makes us not insignificant. To call ourselves insignificant is to miss the point.
The Grand Canyon is vast beyond comprehension, yes—but we do comprehend it. That is the marvel. That beings so small in space and time can look across an abyss carved over eons, and instead of being crushed by its scale, illuminate it with understanding. And not just the Grand Canyon, we do not stop here, no. We trust our explanations to take us to the stars. The canyon, the stars, the universe: they do not care that we exist. And yet, we’ve made them speak, through sense-making and science, through metaphor and theory.
“Grand” is an understatement when it comes to the Canyon. Perhaps, so too is “human" — especially when preceded by that adverb "merely" — for who we are and what we aspire to do.
I just saw the Grand Canyon this April. What a beautiful reflection on how inconceivable it is - in its size, age, formation. Just amazing. Even my teenager couldn’t stop saying, “wow!”
Well said. Your thought can be extended to the milky way, and to a drop of pond water under the microscope. Perhaps insignificant in temporal and spatial scale, we humans are a marvel that through science can understand such a larger whole. Wish more people had this insight. Thank you for your post.