What I learned from "How do you live"
When I was a child, I loved to imagine things about what life is. There were so many questions I had back then. It seems as if my consciousness appeared out of nowhere and started to think. Being a child, the way I thought of things was rather limited, per se. I did not have any sort of experience with life. So my understanding of the world was pretty different. Back then, getting toys and sweet treats was central to me. But as I grew older, I began to understand the broader perspective of life.
Today’s topic would be: The Copernicus way of thinking and how we are interconnected.
As I mentioned just now, being a kid doesn’t really help you understand the capacity and depth of this life. Your ability to comprehend the vastness of this universe is rather shallow. But as we grow older and learn more, we begin to see and notice things differently that only experience can give us.
Copper mentioned to his uncle about how he is a single molecule in this wide world. To his uncle, this is a great discovery as it shows that Copper is thinking about things in a broader perspective and not in a linear way.
Then, His uncle began to explain about the heliocentric theory created by Copernicus. That the Earth moves around the sun. However, back then, during Copernicus' time, many people still believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe. Therefore, what his uncle was implying is that as human beings, we have the tendency to view things from the center.
Becoming an adult does not mean that you have gotten rid of central thinking. Because we still form and think of judgment within ourselves. Adult life can be brutal, with office politics, money, and love. We all view things in a self-interested way, seeing this to better their own circumstances, rarely questioning the full picture ( I’ve been there ). Therefore, his uncle was trying to say that we don’t actually see the world for what it is; we just make sense of it in a way that suits us. Hence, the larger truth is never revealed to us.
I wondered what this truth his uncle was talking about really meant. After some time thinking it over, I started to see it more clearly.
The truth is that to truly understand the world, we have to step outside of ourselves, our own experiences, biases, and perspectives. The world is not just about “me” or “you,” but about how everything and everyone is connected. Our lives, actions, and choices ripple through this vast web of connections, shaping each other in ways we often don’t notice.
This reminds me of a quote Leonardo da Vinci said: “These are the principles for the development of a complete mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science… Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
All of us are interconnected in some way or another. For instance, the phone you have and the phone I have might be from the same manufacturer. The milk I have at home went through many steps: from the farmer who owns the cow, to milking it and selling it to the manufacturer, to someone packaging it and sending it to me in a carton. When I pour that milk into my cup, I am not just drinking something from a carton; I am receiving the labor, time, and energy of countless people. Everything I touch, sit on, wear, or eat. Each item has the fingerprint of someone else's life on it.
The key to understanding from a global perspective is to think like Copernicus. By challenging the common beliefs of his time and thinking outside the box, he proposed the revolutionary idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Although Copernicus himself struggled to provide solid proof for his theory, his groundbreaking hypothesis paved the way for others. Later, Galileo's telescopic observations and Kepler’s precise mathematical laws offered the crucial evidence that confirmed and expanded upon Copernicus's vision of the universe. Without this innovative thinking and the efforts that followed, our understanding of the cosmos might have remained limited.
Even though the theory of heliocentrism is still debated today, that’s not the main point I’m trying to get across. What matters more is how ideas like this come into the world, through bold, independent thought that dares to question what everyone else accepts. We should never forget that it only takes one mind to change everything about the world.
I learned a lot during this chapter, particularly about not being afraid to think outside the box. In today's society, people always want to fit in and follow the masses blindly. When your opinion differs from the majority, you might struggle to adjust. Yet this struggle matters little, because each independent thought, no matter how small, is a step toward thinking like Copernicus. Such independent thinking contributes more to society than simply following the crowd.
Thank you very much for reading. I apologize if I come across as silly or naive.