Self-Awareness

It's hard to say at what point I became aware of myself as a separate and independent human being. I remember at eight years old sitting in the back seat of my parents car that I had an illumination about how big the world was, and how small a part of it I was. I was looking out into the sea of cars that were driving past and saw the people caught up in their activities, busy about their lives and realized with a thud that not one of those people had any idea what I was doing right then...and even more, none of them cared. My life, which to me was so consuming and important, had no impact on the people that lived right next door to me. I was so floored by my realizations that I felt like I was shrinking right into my seat, shrinking even smaller until the universe was overwhelmingly awesome around me that I couldn't even be worthy to be on this small dot within it. I was a speck on a dot, and no one but the few people I interacted with on a day to day basis, my parents and family, would even notice if I one day just took a leap off of it and vanished; life would go on and another would take my place. All of these specks coexist and blend together to make a daily life that is so fast and devouring that we hardly have time to appreciate the grandeur of our existence and the absolute irony of it. Life seemed so short and precarious as I pondered it that day.