fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2170 ]

[ SECRET POST #2170 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2170 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

[Nikita (CW)]

__________________________________________________

03.

[The Pirates! Band of Misfits]

__________________________________________________

04.

[Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell]

__________________________________________________

05.

[Star Wars Expanded Universe]

__________________________________________________

06.

[Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel the Series]

__________________________________________________

07.

[Avengers/MCU, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark]

__________________________________________________

08.

[Go On]

__________________________________________________

09.

[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]

__________________________________________________

10.

[Sailor Moon]

__________________________________________________

11.

[Persona 4]

__________________________________________________

12.

[Kili/Tauriel, The Hobbit]

__________________________________________________

13.

[How to Destroy Angels/Mariqueen Maandig]

__________________________________________________

14.

[Glee]

__________________________________________________

15.

[Les Revenants]

__________________________________________________

16.

[The Walking Dead]

__________________________________________________

17.

[The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]

__________________________________________________

18.

[Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney]

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 060 secrets from Secret Submission Post #310.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Have you ever had some sort of feeling where you realize just how...
small or big or how significant you are?

I just had one yesterday.

(Continued in next comment.)

Edited 2012-12-12 00:41 (UTC)

I was browsing through F!S yesterday in my grandmother's house on my phone, reading all the threads and adding my thoughts where need be. And then, my parents called me: it is time to go.

When I went out to the car, I immediately stopped. Why? Because I saw this.

And suddenly, it hit me.

It really hit me.

Here I am.

Outside my grandmother's house.

In a Malay village.

In 30 degree heat.

Those are coconut trees.

The beach is right there.

And I am talking to people.

people

On the other side of the world.

From Scandinavia. From America. From Canada.

And over there,

It's freezing.

It's snowing.

And the people there.

the people.

They've never

Ever

Walked through a tropical orchard . Or even own one.

Never plucked mangosteens from the trees and eat them on the spot.

Never once lived in a wooden house in the middle of a jungle.

Never tasted ketupat or rendang during Hari Raya.

Never celebrated Hari Raya.

And.

This place.

This community.

Is.

Freaking.

...

huge.

Tl;dr : someone just realized how big this place really is.

Yeah, the world's pretty freaking cool sometimes, isn't it. Shit like that always blows my mind. You know. We've been and walked on the fucking moon, we can talk to people around the world instantaneously, we can travel to almost anywhere in the world trivially, we have pretty much any information from history available literally at our fingertips. It's pretty great.

True, but I think what astounds me the most is the fact that there are people out there who lead completely different lives than mine and experienced things I've never experienced before. Didn't really notice that until now.

Edited 2012-12-12 01:05 (UTC)

Oh yeah that too, definitely. And there's a lot of them. 7 billion. There's millions of people in Los Angeles living their Los Angeles lives, and millions of people living their Tokyo lives, and a billion people living in India, and millions of people living in London, and each single one of them has the exact same detail resolution that you do - that's what gets me, that all these people aren't just abstract people but that their world is as real to them as mine is to me. Iterated 7 billion times.

Ugh, now you're making me miss South-east Asia (Thailand in my case).

Where I am right now, it's below zero and while the snow is nice, I still wish for the possibility of warm snow... XD

Every now and then it occurs to me that even when I'm standing still, the earth is turning at a high rate of speed. And also orbiting the sun at an even higher rate of speed. And the sun is way larger than even the planet I'm standing on, which is ridiculously larger than me, and even the sun is only one of the billions and billions of stars in the galaxy, which is also rotating at an even higher rate of speed...

Sometimes this stuff hits me and it freaks me out to even look up at the sky. It's like I suddenly am seeing infinity, and feeling myself moving through the universe, and it makes me incredibly dizzy.

Wow. I can't even imagine that right right now! Or maybe it's because I'm still reeling from the fact that there are people out there who lead completely different lives from mine, and each and every single one of them is as real as my own.

I know it's the internet, so it's never just me, but still... thank god it's not just me!

Actually, yes. A few. I'm used to feeling hopeless and helpless in life, so the times that I've felt like I've actually impacted something or changed something have felt monumental to me. Two happened while I was in Korea.

1.) This one wasn't so much what I did or what I changed, but just one of those moments that defy classification. It was a beautiful late summer day, after monsoon season, and the sun was out and baking the streets in silence. My school had a lax policy about teachers having to be on campus, so I was wandering the back streets on my lunch break, passing by the old Korean houses that have been there as long as the roads, and the roads were formed by ox carts, now paved over. The air was golden and still, and as I walked down a familiar back road, a thin warbling little tune etched out over the silence. It took me a second to recognize it, before I hummed a few bars, then softly sang, "It's a small world after all..."

It's a very precious memory to me. An expat, in her first year in a foreign country, in her first year of an actual job, and learning and adjusting to a new culture, and this little tune...

2.) Another time, it was just about a week before classes ended for my school. My students weren't going to see me after this, even though I had about a month left in country. One of the students, a nice, sincere girl who had spectacular English, although she wasn't one of the kids who spent a lot of time abroad, came in to talk to me about some class work. She got to asking why I was leaving; at the time, I had it set up that when I got home, I was going to do some complicated plan and join the Army. She was taken aback, and truly touched; it was almost like I had opened a physical door for her. In her life, teachers tended to go on being teachers, even if they went back to their home countries. It had given her a new experience, a new perspective. If nothing else, it gave this thoughtful girl something to think about for some time to come.

3.) The third was just a month or two ago. I was having a conversation with a new classmate of mine, a Korean professional who came to the States to get a MA. She wanted to know where I taught at in Korea. To our surprise, we realize she had graduated high school from the same school I had taught at, but years ago. It was an incredible coincidence.

1) is such a poignant story, thank you for sharing it with us...

I've had more of these about the galaxy/universe than the world but... a lot, while studying astronomy. I think the first moment was one of those pics saying 'so this is where you are in the Milky Way' but I still get that way whenever I see another freaking galaxy (well... usually Andromeda) through a telescope. :)

I had the same feeling in astronomy class, too. I like that feeling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i2y4sEQpRI
- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

oh my god that comment picture combo is straight up adorable. this is completely patronising, but I want to adopt you.

But yeah. Have had those feelings pretty darn often ever since I was a kid ever since I realised Darkwing Duck was available in more than one language all over the world. At least it graduated to the cliche of looking up at a clear sky and knowing other folk elsewhere can see the same constellations or moon or whatnot.

Recently, I tried to look at Google Earth. I don't know what it is, but I cannot look at it. Literally, it terrifies me. Most of the time trying to turn the map results in me slamming my laptop shut until I calm down.

The only thing I think I can come up with is that I realize how FUCKING HUGE the Earth actually is, and my brain just can't deal with it. I can't fathom the depth of space.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2170 ]

Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...

Re: Guess who finally realize how BIG the world is...