In one of my friend Maria Jose’s Facebook pictures, she’s standing on top of some mountaintop. The photographer is ostensibly positioned on a similar peak nearby, creating an extra-wide camera shot: Green mountains down to her left, and a vibrant, blue-green sea down to her right. Behind her, the sea blends upward into layers of mist, clouds and sky.

And there, in the middle of the picture, is Maria Jose (aka MariaJo), her arms outstretched. It’s a very cool picture (perhaps she’ll let me post it).

What put my brain into action was that MariaJo occupies about one percent of the picture. She’s there, in the middle of it, a tiny mass of bones, flesh, hair, eye shadow and Abercombrie & Fitch. The natural wonder around her dwarfs her by comparison.

How small we are, we humans, in the scheme of things! How infinitesimally small!

How much of our lives do we spend in the opaque bubbles of own heads, filled with thoughts and emotions and experiences and memories — all of them focusing on, or in some way related to, one single person? One teeny, tiny person?

Why do we build these things up to be important, when in fact they have relatively no bearing on the state of the Universe? Why, afraid our smallness, do we try to make ourselves bigger than we are?

Maybe we haven’t learned, as a species, to appreciate the fact that we are such a minuscule part of things. Perhaps we have a type of Napoleonic complex that causes us to super-size the circumstances and events of our lives into issues of grand importance.

One thing’s for sure: It’s not worth worrying to much about. The world won’t end because of it. Really.

It’s no big deal.

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