A star

Look at the sky. Isn’t it beautiful? The lights—they shine brighter now that it’s night. Sure, none of these lights can compare to the vivid, painful white, the searing and overbearing glow that is the sun, but they hold their own special power. Each dot, more than likely larger than the sun we call our own—a beautiful, shimmering star, existing somehow within our own havens. Our world—with a visual lightshow the likes of which we’d pay millions for in Dubai, and yet we remain entirely ungrateful while gazing up at the night sky. Why, would you say, is that? When I walk, I don’t listen to my footsteps—a seeming prescription of normalcy—and yet at the same instance, if I were to be suddenly deprived of my feet, I’d sense a great disturbance within my daily life. It’s as if the universe is telling me that no, I don’t need access to every shimmering star to hold in my hand—but rather, that each star holds its own special place hung above my head.

Were that place to be disturbed, for something as small in my mind as a star, I might not notice. But if it were to change with another, closer thing which I take for granted, all of a sudden I’d feel betrayed by the universe itself. But maybe, when you think about it, each little drop of dew, each thing within the greater schema and makeup of the code that has generated the entirety of our sensed world, matters. It’s like the butterfly effect—something that exists, in the smallest sense, and yet if it were taken from us, would cause a great ripple that would turn into a tidal wave before it reached the shore.

Like the mind. The mental state in which we operate each day relies carefully on millions upon millions of connections, each crafted carefully during our formative years. And yet, as we grow old, each piece that constructs our mind is slowly shifted, modified, or even fully lost. Our memories cease, our behavior changes, and our very internal dialogue changes from hope to depression. The compounding nature of age, and the accelerating nature of time, mix together to create such a unique environment that it almost always goes unnoticed by nature of being accepted. And yet, why should we accept it?

To be

I remember, when I was young, being a much more talented writer, a sharp thinker, and a gifted, energized soul. I felt confident, excited to take on the day, to explore each dew drop within my world I had yet to catalog to my mind. Yet as time continued to chug along like a coal train, incessantly using a dwindling supply of resources that I perhaps should have been more careful to conserve, I felt those traits drifting away from me. I’m no longer as sharp as I once was, no longer have that natural “knack” that leaves you overwhelmed by your success and talent. Look at the sky.

It’s beautiful, sure, but there’s something else to it—something sad. Each star, each individual light among countless others, operates at a level neither you nor I is capable of achieving. How could we? We die in decades, sometimes a century, and yet these stars remain unmoving, hovering above our small world, not even recognizing it as they drift further apart in an ever-colder universe. Scary, yes, but there’s something so satisfying about that idea, which makes you long for it if you think about it a little too long.