Humbled

I was just walking back to my hotel on the Greek island of Paros, after a delicious plate of chicken souvlaki and a few [too many] glasses of wine, looking up at the perfectly clear, starry sky. It was then that it hit me: they named the stars. They named the stars. These people, right here, they gave the stars the names we still call them today. Orion, Polaris, Casseiopeia, Mars, Venus. They named the stars. The people who I can hear right now, shouting "Opa!" and clinking glasses, launching bottle rockets on the beach and dancing to the throbbing beat of techno music in a nearby club. They invented the hypotenuse, the harp, the toga, the phalanx, sculptures, feta cheese and democracy. And someone, one of these Greeks, looked up at this same sky I am looking at, clear and perfect, and named the stars.

How cool is that?