Are we too slow for the Universe?

When I’m sitting alone at night, looking at the sky, a familiar thought returns.

Those distant stars… those other worlds;
are we ever really going to get a closer look at them?

They feel impossibly far. Too far for a human lifetime. Too far to reach. And yet, almost immediately, another question follows me just as strongly:

Are they truly that far?
Or is that distance only a limitation of how we live and move, rather than a fixed property of the universe itself?

Physics gives a surprisingly calm answer.

It says that if someone could travel very close to the speed of light, time would slow down for them. Distance would shrink. A journey that takes thousands of years from Earth’s point of view could pass quietly almost without being felt by the traveler.

The universe doesn’t rearrange itself.
Only the experience of it does.

That idea stays with me.

It suggests that “far” and “near” might not belong to the universe at all; but to our current way of existing inside it.

If speed alone can change how time and distance behave, then how many other limits do we accept simply because we’ve never lived differently?

What if some things feel unreachable not because they are distant, but because we are slow?
What if the universe isn’t closed, just scaled beyond the way we experience it today?

While thinking about this, a line from the Isha Upanishad surfaced again in my mind:

तदेजति तन्नैजति
तद्दूरे तद्वन्तिके

“It moves, yet it moves not.
It is far, yet it is near.”

As if someone long ago noticed that reality doesn’t behave the way it appears at first glance, that distance and closeness, motion and stillness, can exist together depending on how you stand within the whole.

Modern physics tells us space and time depend on the observer. Ancient thought hints that reality itself may be layered, and that what we experience is only a fragment.

Maybe other dimensions are not hidden.
Maybe they’re simply unreachable to the way we currently live and move.

Like standing at a window and mistaking the view for the entire sky.

Even Adi Shankaracharya stated:

ब्रह्म सत्यं जगन्मिथ्या
जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः

“Brahma alone is real.
The world is an appearance.
The individual self is not different from Brahma.”

I may never travel near the speed of light.
I may never experience another dimension.

But knowing that distance can shrink and time can bend changes how I look at the universe and at myself.

It makes reality feel less rigid, less final.
More subtle. More negotiable.

Maybe the universe isn’t impossibly far, maybe we’re just moving through it very slowly.

What about you? When you look up at the stars, do they feel distant… or just waiting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.