Perspective

Isn't it amazing when someone sits down and studies the obvious? We can all drift around assuming we kind of understand and have things in control when we haven't done the homework and the reality is, we don't know what we don't know. Then someone comes along and states the obvious and suddenly we have a point to draw perspective from.

As you might suspect, this blog post was inspired by a perspective I gained just today. How do you get perspective on the number "trillion?". What does trillion mean? Well, it's a lot of something. But since I don't run into a trillion of something on a daily basis(except bad drivers), it is hard to really appreciate what a trillion represents.

Here is the piece of perspective I ran into that I will share with you:
1 million seconds of time takes about 11 days to run out.
1 billion seconds of time takes 32 years.
1 trillion seconds of time takes 32,000 years.
Mind you, that is counting every second 24/7/365, not just the "waking hours" of the day.

Does that smack you between the eyes? Let's then give 32,000 years some perspective. If Adam and Eve the moment they were created from the dust of the earth (which Bible scholars believe was 8 to 10 thousand years ago) started counting 1...2...3...4...etc. they would not be one third of the way to reaching 1 trillion yet! It would take them 22,000 more years!

So, where was the last place we heard the word trillion tossed around like...loose change? Does this give you some perspective? Does this make you shake in your boots?

In the recent past, our country has descended into the pit of debt an additional 7 trillion dollars. Let's see, I am not too good at math, 7 x 32,000 = 224,000. Am I right? It is said that the United States of America carries a debt that including unfunded mandates, national health care, Social Security promises, etc., etc., of 107 trillion dollars. You do the math this time. The analogy is that if we paid back our national debt one dollar per second without sending another dollar (basically forever and ever) we would never pay off our national debt.

One thing that perspective can do for us is make the truth much more applicable to our lives. If this doesn't cause you to go to your knees in prayer, you might need a little more perspective.