ELEMENTS

Everything in the universe, from the smallest grain of sand to the farthest-away planet, is made up of 90 naturally-occurring chemical elements, the universe in a nutshell.

However, we somehow feel shortchanged when we learn this, as we look up at the night sky and see that carpet of celestial bodies as far as the eye can see.  "You mean all that is composed of just 90 elements?"

We then consider the universe that is our own bodies, including that mysterious throbbing energy, the spark that is our lives, and again we are struck that such an extraordinary phenomenon could be made up of no more than that handful of elements.

We then realize that our astonishment over this is also no more than those 90 elements.