Dinosaurs, Jews, and Time

Like many others his age, my four year old son is obsessed with dinosaurs.  He reads dinosaur books & encyclopedias like it's his job, and we have spent hours upon hours talking about all the different kinds of dinosaurs, which dinosaurs lived during which periods of the Mesozoic Era, etc.  I have to admit that prior to about 6 months ago, I knew practically nothing about dinosaurs.  Whatever I may have learned in school was long forgotten, my brother never went through a dinosaur phase (as far as I can remember), and I was never really interested in learning more.  However, my knowledge of dinosaurs has skyrocketed in the last few months - thanks to my son - and it's gotten me thinking a lot about the nature of time, as well as the role of humans and Judaism in the universe.

From what I understand, dinosaurs lived from about 250 to 65 million years ago.  That means dinosaurs roamed the earth for about 185 million years.  There were various kinds of dinosaurs that came and went during that time, but still, that length of time totally blows my mind.  185 MILLION YEARS.  How can I possibly wrap my mind around that amount of time???  When my son and I learn about different kinds of dinosaurs - like Diplodocus of the Jurassic Period (~150 MYA) and T Rex of the Cretaceous (~65 MYA) - we find that they lived something like 80 MILLION YEARS apart from each other.  For my son, those are just numbers, facts to be learned and regurgitated, as he tries to understand which dinosaurs lived at which times.  For me, however, those numbers represent something else - something bordering on the spiritual.  I am filled with awe that the earth has been around that long (even with several 'mass extinctions' in the earth's history), and I become totally paralyzed in my thinking about 'time' when I consider the vast length of time that dinosaurs were here.

By comparison, humans have been around for something like 50,000 years.  From what little I know of evolutionary science, 'homo sapiens' developed from other 'homo' species over the course of about 2 million years, but humans as we know them today have 'roamed the earth' for 200,000 years at most.  According to Wikipedia, humans reached 'full behavioral modernity' about 50,000 years ago. 

Normally, 50,000 years seems like a REALLY LONG TIME.  In the Jewish community, we think of our biblical stories as taking place a LONG TIME ago - to the tune of 3,000-4,000 years ago.   Even Jewish life in the 19th century (just 200 years ago) seems like a long time ago.  So what do I do with the knowledge that dinosaurs not only lived more than 65 million years ago, but that they were on earth for 185 million years?!  And that two different dinosaurs may have lived 50-100 million years apart?!  That's really amazing, mind-boggling...  It makes our time as humans on earth seem like a blip on the radar, barely even measurable in the broad scope of things.

To me, all this raises the ultimate question - the question of meaning and purpose.  Why are we were?  What consequence does our existence have?  How can we find / create meaning if we realize that the span of our human lives is so tiny compared to the long existence of life in general? 

I think there are many ways to answer the question, but for me personally, this is where Judaism and Jewish tradition steps in.  Judaism teaches us to value life - no matter how short it is - and to sanctify the time we are here.  There is a teaching by Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Psischke (1765–1827) that helps us figure out how to do this.  He suggests that we should always carry two notes in our pockets. The one in the right pocket reads: “The world was created for my sake.” The one in the left pocket reads: “I am but dust and ashes.” In other words, we should always be aware of our microscopic existence in the world, humble enough to recognize that we are nothing 'but dust and ashes.'  At the same time, we must not only go through life with that mindset, for that would lead to nihilation, to a sense of complete purposeless and emptiness.  Instead, we should also sometimes take the approach that 'the world was created for (our) sake.'  We should feel that our actions do indeed matter, that there is meaning in the universe and meaning in our individual lives.

While trying to live between the two "pockets" or two extremes, I'm still totally blown away by the time frame of the dinosaur era, and the comparably miniscule time frame of human existence... how could I not have realized this until now???  I guess it's true what they say - you really do learn a lot from your children!