A Way Out of My Depression

I am seventy-five years old and in retirement. Yet my day starts bad, every day. Because every morning I read dead body counts in the newspapers and the video of destruction and littered dead men, women and children I see on the TV. To overcome my depression sometimes I pray but it does not really help because the hopelessness is too deep. To divert my mind, I read books – fiction and nonfiction alike. Today in one of the popular science books I was reading I come across what Carl Sagan once said:

“We succeeded in taking [a picture of Earth from the outskirts of our solar system], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young people in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived their on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”

Could there be multiple (say, a trillion) universes? Is there a universe keeper? I may be the keeper of my house, cattle and crops, but how much do I care about the minuscule bugs in some of the fruits in my garden? The fruit reappears each year, and some will have the same minuscule organisms that perhaps live countless generations in one season. How much do I know of their suffering? Am I concerned about them? How can I help them, even if I want to? I am concerned about my family, cattle and crops. The bugs in the fruit can only be annoying, just as the weeds in the garden are. I may be a powerful housekeeper, but I am not perfect, not all-knowing, not all-kind. I am not interested in the weeds and bugs.

I wonder if the universe keeper is aware of what’s happening on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam?