Trinity of Time, Matter and Meaning

Trinity of Time, Matter, and Meaning: A Personal Cosmology at home

They sit silently on my table — three intertwined objects of similar stories. At first glance, they are curiosities. But as I look closer, they begin to speak. Not in words, but in material memory. A meteorite. A piece of amber. A human skull. Together, they form what I think of now as a personal cosmology — a trinity of time, matter, and meaning.

The meteorite is irregular, black, full of texture. Jagged in parts, smooth in others. Its surface carries the burned signature of entering Earth’s atmosphere. Holding it, you feel weight beyond size — a sense of outer space embedded in your palm. It is older than our planet. Born in the cold, airless void of the early solar system, it traveled silently across time and space for millions of years until Earth's gravity pulled it in. It struck the atmosphere at 20 km per second, lit the sky, and somehow, a piece survived. It landed — maybe in a desert or a polar plain — and waited to be noticed. Now it’s here, in my home.

And this home — Earth — is not still. It spins at 1,600 km/h, orbits the sun at 107,000 km/h, and drifts with the solar system through the galaxy at more than 800,000 km/h. All of this in complete silence. No engine, no sound, just smooth movement through nothingness. Earth has traveled like this for over four billion years, and it will continue long after we are gone. Most of the time, we forget we’re on a moving rock in endless space. The meteorite reminds me.

The amber is the opposite: warm, delicate, and earthly. A frozen flame. Its surface is warm, almost soft in hue, glowing with honeyed golds and shadowed browns. Inside, flecks and filaments tell of life that existed over 40 million years ago — including a tiny insect, visible on the reverse side of the piece. This drop of resin once dripped from a tree in a dense northern forest, somewhere in what is now the Baltics. Then it froze, hardened, and stayed. Unmoved for millions of years while oceans shifted, species died, and continents broke apart. Amber is not just preserved material — it is preserved time. A moment that did not decay.

And then the skull — carved, human, symbolic. It doesn’t try to mimic life. Instead, it reminds us of what comes after. It is a symbol of thought, of memory, of mortality. Of the only species that wonders what it’s made of, what came before, and what comes after. The skull doesn’t just represent death — it represents awareness of death. And with that awareness, the strange gift of asking: what does it all mean?

These three objects — the meteorite, the amber, the skull — were not collected in a day. Finding them was not easy. Each took time, patience, and the willingness to search beyond what was convenient. And now they sit — rare, expensive, and, I believe, perhaps uniquely united under one roof — forming a collection I did not initially know I was building.

They are sequential in form — not just in their narrative, but in what they imply: that matter becomes life, and life becomes thought. The meteorite stands for matter — the raw, ancient substance of the universe. The amber, for life and time — fragile, beautiful, momentary. The skull, for mind — for reflection, meaning, memory. They are the intersection of science, history, and philosophy. A chain: from cosmic dust, to living form, to consciousness.

Carl Sagan said we are made of star stuff. Heraclitus claimed all is in flux, that nothing stays still. Heidegger believed that to truly live, one must live with death in view. These aren’t abstract ideas when you hold these objects. They become real, physical, felt. I don’t need to go to a museum to study them, I just sit and stare and they begin to explain themselves.