You Are The Center Of The Universe

“The universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the universe.” -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In the early 16th century a man named Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his heretical views. Notable amongst his ideas was heliocentrism, or the idea that the planets orbit the sun and the sun is the center of our universe. Radical ideas in the 17th century typically had mortal consequences. Which is why I have to imagine Giordano had posthumous disdain when a few decades later Galileo presented the same idea of heliocentrism and was merely sentenced to a life of house arrest.

Life’s not fair. But life in house arrest is hardly a reward for being right. It’s even less of a reward when we now conclude that both geocentrism and heliocentrism are wrong.

The universe has no center and modern cosmology shows that the center of the observable universe is actually a spherical region centered upon the observer. In layman’s terms, the center of the universe is you.

And you, and you, and yes even you.

This makes Solzhenitsyn’s quote all the more fascinating. He was making a figurative truth claim and somehow hit a double entendre with scientific truth. So what should you do with this information? For starters, it’s important to see each person as the center of their own story or universe. But more importantly….

You are the center of the universe, you rockstar. Way to go.