Yeah, I think the vastness of geologic time has been aptly described as "geology’s signal contribution to human thought" -- the same way astronomy showed us we weren't the literal center of the universe. I think about Myr and Gyr timescales every day at work, but it's still hard to really intuitively grasp.
Obligatory John McPhee:
> Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to deep time. Any number above a couple of thousand years—fifty thousand, fifty million—will with nearly equal effect awe the imagination.
> Consider the earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the king’s nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history.
Obligatory John McPhee:
> Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to deep time. Any number above a couple of thousand years—fifty thousand, fifty million—will with nearly equal effect awe the imagination.
> Consider the earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the king’s nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history.