Is There Grandeur In This View Of Life?

One of my all-time favorite lines which constantly reminds me of my insignificance is the last paragraph of Darwin's Origin of Species:

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

If I translate Darwin's lines into my current state of mind:
Darwin is saying there is beauty in Max passing away. Is it really?

These past few days, while going for small walks with Neo, I saw the same people who looked at Max with pitiful eyes just a few weeks ago, now look at Neo with a sparkle in their eyes. Unconsciously our brains biased towards sensing grandeur in this view of life.

I pretend to be that "impartial spectator" of Adam Smith and observe things as "it is" as they unfold while walking with Neo. Few of those people immediately subsided their sparkle when they looked at my eyes. Maybe, they sensed me missing Max. No matter how hard we try, one cannot be an impartial spectator; the observer affects the observed.   

We are creatures living at a micro-level of this grandeur. We are part of this beauty and terror.  We are incapable of being an impartial spectator and observe while living inside it. The only truth we comprehend is that there is no beauty nor terror anywhere else in the universe as we know. It is just a vast empty space for eternity.

If I translate Darwin's lines again with this perspective:
Max came from a lineage of a single-cell organism and I happened to come from the same lineage. Then after millions of years, we evolved into a different mixture of complex cells and then thousands of years later, against all odds we found each other and spend our lives together. Then one day, last month Max was gone. In a brief time, I will be gone too. All this was just one micro-level story that unfolded for just an infinitesimal time. Trillions of such stories had unfolded before and trillions are unfolding now and trillions will unfold in the future.

I have to admit that Darwin was right although I miss Max. There is indeed grandeur in this view of life since this is the "only" view of life we know in the entire space and time. One thing we can do is work towards eliminating terror and start giving beauty more chance.

In the end, I think one can find one's significance hidden in the phrase - "dependent on each other in so complex a manner". I found mine.