Looking at the Night Sky; Looking at my Life

Author’s Note: I won’t be able to post a blog tomorrow, forgive me! But let’s enjoy the time we have together now, shall we?

When you look at the night sky, you can’t help but be a little pensive. You think about how beautiful it all is, or how futile. You think about how we’re all in this together, or you think that we’re all just clinging to this spinning rock. You think about how big and bright the moon is, or you think how dark it can get.

Me? I think about how much my life is like the night sky.

And there are two phases of gazing at the sky. First, you’re all like whoa. It’s so big. And there’s so little we know about it. I mean, there could be aliens staring at the same sky. That kind of scares me. Actually, that really scares me. I’m American; it’s hard to imagine that I’m not the center of the universe. And what about black holes? They just take over everything. What if an asteroid hits us? What if we’re all living on the moon in 50 years? 100 years?

This first phase is how I look at life a lot. It’s so vast. And it’s filled with so many things I don’t know. And it’s mostly frightening. And filled with black holes that go on forever. I want to believe that there is more to life, but like space, I’m not always sure that there are intelligent beings.

Then there’s the second phase. I am able to pinpoint individual constellations, planets that I’m not able to see in a winter sky. The more I look, the more light I see. If I’m lucky, I’ll see something shooting across the sky. If I’m luckier, I might see the moon peak out from behind the clouds for a moment, bathing me in its borrowed light. I know I’m nothing, but I feel like something looking up at a sky that Shakespeare and Anne Frank were seeing too.

And this is also sometimes how I see life. I see it as awe-inspiring with so much to offer. The more I look, the more light I see in my life, too. I can find things to be grateful for, and I can find things that make me want to be more than what I currently am.

You can tell how I’m seeing the night sky because it reflects how I’m feeling at any given point of my life, like the moon reflects the light of the sun. But with anything having to do with perspective, it all depends on you. Space can be as scary or as glorious as you want it to be. And so can your life.