Thoughts While Star-Gazing

I like to lose myself in the night sky sometimes, but don't do it much anymore. I'm afraid people would think it was weird to see a thirty-year old man in the yard, lying on his back in the middle of the night. I think I'd like to move to the country so I wouldn't have to worry about that.

I like to think about how big everything is. I think of how small I am in comparison. I know every one of those stars is really a giant ball of energy as bright as the sun, but they are so far away, that to me, they are only a pinpoint of light. It awes me to think those stars are so distant that their very light is sometimes hundreds or thousands of years old by the time it meets my eye because light travels only so fast. Seeing the light of the stars is like looking backward in time.

I try to count the stars sometimes just as I did when I was young, but it's just as impossible now as it was then. There are so many stars and who knows how many have planets circling around them just as ours does? And of those planets, what good reason is there to think that some of them are not the home of self-aware beings like me who are looking up into their own sky just as I am in that very moment and being filled with the same awe as myself by the vastness of the Universe and the smallness of themselves?

I think there must be some-odd millions of galaxies in the Universe, all filled with millions of stars, and there must be millions of worlds like mine circling those stars. Our star, the sun, is just another one. I don't believe it's cosmically special in any way. It's just another star floating in the Universe, and the Earth is just an ordinary world going around and around that star.

I am just another human being inhabiting this world. There are six billion other creatures like me. They breathe and eat and inhabit space just like me. I want to think I'm special, but I'm really just one of the many, not really so much smarter or superior in any other way than anyone else.

I compare the Universe to a mighty desert full of sand. The world I live on is like a grain of that sand. I am like an atom within that grain of sand, nothing more and nothing less.

But I don't like to think of myself as insignificant. It might be accurate and objective to do so, but something in me rails against the thought. So I change gears to suit myself. Then, I realize that while I am one of many, I am also unique. No one has a fingerprint quite like mine, or a signature, or a personality that's exactly like mine. In that sense, I am special. In my own way, I matter because I'm just a little bit different than anything or anyone else in the Universe. The same could be said of our world, our sun, and our place in the galaxy.

The way I feel when I look at the stars is a bit of a paradox to me. To see that everything is so large and I am so small should crush my ego with the truth of my own insignificance. If I can't believe I am so important that the Universe exists for my amusement and observation, which I don't, then why should I have ambition? Why should I live in a morally upright manner? Why should I try to help others when it would be easier to worry only about myself? Should I do so to please God? Or to please others? Or to avoid the punishment of those who enforce the law?

I have no easy answer for that question. But for reasons that are not quite logical to me, looking at the stars and thinking large thoughts of the Universe and the nature of God does not lead me to believe that because I am so insignificant, nothing really matters. Instead, I am inspired. I feel that though I am little more than an atom of a grain of sand within the gigantic desert of the Universe, I will strive to rise above my intrinsic insignificance. I will fill my mind with all the knowledge it can hold. I will mold my talents to their full potential. I will not follow the law because it is the law, but will do what is right for the sake of its rightness. In all my actions and thoughts, I will strive to be as large as I am able.

These are the thoughts that come to me when I gaze into the sky on a clear night. I tend to forget them after a time and let the mundane aspects of daily existence dominate my mind. I know my time as an atom in the grain of sand called Earth is finite and comically short in the universal scheme, but before that time is ended, I will strive with all the energy within my small being to move a little closer to the stars.