A word for realising the insignificance of human life against the scale of the universe and enjoying it


A man sits on a bench considering his woeful burden. He looks up at the stars and compares the distance from here to his house and here to the furthest visible star Deneb. Suddenly his problems seems pitifully faint and untroubling. He laughs and relaxes in his seat, staring at the ducks.



Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. ~Carl Sagan


I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied. ~Michael Collins, astronaut



I'm looking for a noun or verb that describes this positive enlightening experience.




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