Carl Sagan and the unexpected virtues of exploration

As far back as I can remember I’ve always wanted to be a scientist. I

remember my parents buying various encyclopedias and magazines for me that
covered topics such as dinosaurs and astronomy, before I had even started
school. A memory that’s frozen in my mind like dew in a snowfall is of one
eventful evening in winter when I was about seven- my father and I had spent
hours building a papier-mâché model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s fossil. The
model wasn’t as large as a real T-Rex, but about the size of an eagle- one of its
descendants.
Through the waves of time like a sailor on a mission in the middle of a
ruthless ocean, my interest in science never wavered. The waves had done
nothing to erode my enthusiasm of the subject. But a burning question had been
slowly blown to a flame in my mind ever since ninth grade. Over the years the
fire had spread to a concerning degree and I was in a dilemma-How does one’s
discovery in a field of quantum mechanics or questions of string theory and many
worlds help anybody?
I was always told by my teachers and everyone who studied science and
they repeated their ideology like a gospel- the point of science is to benefit
humanity, yet no such apparent benefit was to be seen. Even if in my voyages I
had encountered lands of promises, how would that ever help humanity? Is
finding an empty barren land not an achievement? Why must one spend their
money on exploration of unmanned and extraterrestrial land when there are
people starving and homeless? These questions hadn’t just germinated like a
weed inside me but had received their fair share of sunlight and water from my
peers and elders too. Some of them were planted by others and were sucking
away the nutrients off of more endeavoring questions.
And to my pleasure and gratitude, I learned that I wasn’t looking closely
and there was in fact virtue in exploration.
Other than science, I had always loved painting pictures and I’ve done so
ever since I had learnt to mumble words. My parents used to buy me skinny
sketchbooks made out of recycled paper and I would fill them up with gibberish
images within a day. Much like science, my enthusiasm in painting had never
wavered but I had never once wondered- why am I doing this? Perhaps because
visual arts have never been seen as a serious career around my circles? The
beauty and joy of painting superseded any such question about purpose. The
purpose was to enjoy painting and think in a creative manner and apply those
qualities in life.
Haven’t scientists always been wrong? Limited by the technology and
studies of their time, every giant was once a dwarf and it wasn’t easy to find a
shoulder to stand upon and gaze into the endless horizon. But Carl Sagan once
said- “