I recently watched a 2002 interview of Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura — she wore red on the Starship Enterprise, and her kiss with Captain Kirk was the first interracial smooch on TV in the United States) where she was speaking warmly of Star Trek, saying that infinite diversity and infinite combinations are what make the world beautiful.

Indeed: what if there were only one color, one sound, one season, one kind of flower, or one kind of animal? Nature has made grains of sand and snowflakes, not to mention all the stars in the universe. And of the trillions of each, no two are identical. Seven billion people huddle on this planet, and without a doubt each one of us is unique. Even if our genomes were the same, what boggles my mind doesn’t necessarily boggle yours.

What’s diversity if not an expression of tolerance? Life accepts all. Whatever works can stay for as long as it works. And as long as I exist I have the opportunity to uniquely savor the endless variety — that beautiful spice embraced by life.

We accept diversity in nature, but when it comes to ideas and beliefs, we’re willing to kill other human beings so that our principles and values dominate. Perhaps we should take a clue. If we truly want harmony and cooperation among people, we need more tolerance and less narrow-minded principles.

If, however, a person wants an individual-based peace, which Prem Rawat addresses, something else is needed. They need to feel at peace, not just get along with other people.

Diversity is not only an expression of tolerance, but also of change. The manifest universe is constantly rearranging itself into different combinations. It’s often said that “the only constant is change.” But aren’t we ignoring the forest for the trees when we say that? Infinity itself is constant; it’s the finite pieces of infinity that are the changing bits. Finding what is constant is the key — in an ever-changing world, being conscious of permanence puts one at peace.

Is there a frontier to be found for permanence? Star Trek would always open with the words “space — the final frontier,” which sounded dramatic, but in outer space frontiers are likely as endless as space itself. The real final frontier, in my experience, is the inner space that Knowledge reveals. It’s been final for me because Knowledge ended my search. The search ended and discovery began. And it will always be a frontier: like the peeling of an unending onion, Knowledge is a glorious discovery of infinity.

Thoughts, like ships in outer space, travel at warp speed. In the inner space, movement is on a more human scale. Each breath we take is a wooden tie supporting rails of kindness and strength, humility and awe, profundity and humor. Settlements on the frontier have names like Happiness, Clarity, Wisdom and Understanding. Our minds think that the way to experience infinity in a human lifetime is to scream loud, to see and listen to everything, to go as fast as possible and to try to do it all. That’s logical enough, but the human heart has a different method. Infinity will never be covered no matter how fast or how long we try. So the heart’s tack is to slow down and to be attentive, to extract the joy out of the embrace of every moment and every step of exploration.

Illustration by Sara Shaffer.