Everything is worth your interest.

We humans are so different in our interests. I once knew a guy who studied bugs. Not the most interesting and well-known bugs -- ants and termites and such -- but very strange bugs who lived in South America. I asked him why he would do that, since it wasn't going to gain him much fame or recognition, and he told me that to study just that beetle, from its birth to its death, told him all he needed to know about the universe.

I dismissed it at the time -- a bug nut raving on, right? -- but the longer I thought about it, and the older I got, the more convinced I was that he was onto something.

And that something is just that any creation we study gives us clues as to the larger creation: the biosphere of existence, the universe itself. I know that's a big leap, but the point is that this bug represents the intricacies of creation, the very point of it all.

But why this bug?

Because any single thing you find growing is worth study. Not just that bug but a single leaf from any tree you can find in your yard. Why this leaf? Why this shape? Why so many? What is a leaf to a tree? Why do they grow there? What is a tree? And why?

If I've lost you already, then you probably aren't ready to start thinking about all this. You're excused. Go do something else. If, on the other hand, you're still reading, consider this: nature creates and disposes of countless creatures and forms of nature for every one that survives. What's that all about? It's like nature is always experimenting, not quite sure which design or experiment will make it and which won't. Throw them all out there, and see which ones make it in the Darwinian world of survival of the fittest.

The dinosaurs, big as they were, didn't make it. Not sure why. Maybe an asteroid, maybe global cooling and warming. Maybe something else: maybe they were too big to sustain themselves. In other words, not enough to eat. Who knows? But the point is this: they didn't make it.

We, us humans, did. Why? Well, we did this or that and . . . but wait. That's really not what I'm talking about. We know what we humans have done. Enough said. (Or not: keep reading.)

It's everything else that needs our attention. From the tiniest of entities, locked within an atom, to the grandest of nuclear displays in the far regions on the cosmos, that's what we need to be thinking about. We sort of know about life, at least human life, but because it's so complicated and demands so much of our attention, we forget about all that life above and below us.

And yet it goes on and will go on long after we're gone. How about that? You and I won't live to see the end of microscopic life in the ocean or cosmic life beyond our solar system. We're dots like that period at the end of my last sentence -- and a million of us live on it. Maybe a billion.

So where does that leave us humans?

We've been given a world that, so far as we know, doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. Mabye it does, but we have no evidence. I think our obligation is to explore it, map it, try to understand it.

But that's not all we've been given. We also have consciousness: self-awareness. And that's a lot trickier than mapping the world. It's pretty much bottomless. We can understand why we do certain things in public, among friends or strangers, but that's just manners. What about our relationships with family, friends, lovers? What about what we do when we're alone, and why?Uncharted territory. We each have to explore it on our own, at risk. Interesting, no?

The tiniest bug in a pool of stale water is interesting to some of us. The question of love among humans is interesting to others of us. The whole notion of trees -- why they exist, why they're different sizes, etc. -- is interesting to a different bunch of us. Why we believe in a god or not is of supreme importance to some; to others it's not even a question. And what about that winter snowflake that's not supposed to look like any other? Is that true? Some of us care; some don't.

There is so much in our lives on this planet that demand attention that we all/each have to decide, at some point, where to focus our attention, our passion. It may be art, it may be science, it may be the intricacies of business or engineering, or it may just be figuring out how to survive when our mental faculties are failing us and we're trucking our belongings around in a stolen cart from WalMart but still stopping, from time to time, to admire a new daffodil sprung up along the sidewalk or -- Glory! -- finding a dollar bill dropped from someone's pocket that will buy us a corn dog and a Coke at the 7-11.

And when we sit beneath some bridge eating that corn dog and drinking that Coke, we may admire a columbine sprung up from nothing, in the shade, destined to die in a few days. We may look on it and give thanks that we'll be up tomorrow morning, scrounging again. Or we may fall back into despair.

No matter who we are, what we likely won't notice is the tiny things going to work on that beautiful but fragile flower, reducing it to ruins, taking it back down to compost. All those bees and insects and, further down, worms and even lesser creatures, reducing that beautiful flower to its essence. It's all invisible to us, but it happens. And it's worth studying.

So who designed all this intricacy? God? Random nature? No one knows. But that's the way it is, and we're presented with it, every day if we choose to look. If we choose not to, it still goes on.

Everything, from the microscopic to the astronomic, is worth a look, worth study, worth your interest. And that includes the human mind. What a wondrous, maddening construct! Capable of profound thought and thoughtless violence. Easily warped but also often maintained intact. A bundle, a network, of nerve endings in the space of a cantaloupe: you, me, everyone.

And you know the best part? Nobody has fathomed any of it. The smartest person doesn't get any of it. Not the least the meaning of it. Why did you fall in love with that girl? Why black holes? Why anything?

Not a clue.

And don't you love it? Doesn't it speak of mysteries beyond our understanding? Even Einstein's understanding: after all, he was always searching for a unifying theory to explain the forces of the universe, and he had to admit defeat. But he had a glimpse: there probably is such a theory. It just may be way out of our reach. Is that a problem? I don't think so.

Think about it this way (as a friend put it to me): Would you believe in a God you understood?

Revel in the mystery. Live well, do good, and hope for the best.

And, in the meantime, study anything you want: it's all important. Even gnats. Even . . .