Stardust

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You’re slouched in a creaking old chair, a long day of work behind you and a sleepless night ahead. The air in the cramped room is stale and suffocating. You step outside and a chill breeze welcomes you. You breathe out, basking in the incandescent light of a fading sun. Night falls fast and the first stars are lit, a thousand little suns flickering against the obsidian backdrop of an ominous night. You look up at the starry sky and a memory washes over you. You remember being a kid, naive and giddy, trying to count the stars in the sky. You’re not quite sure where that ingenuity was lost.

As you gaze at the starlit night, the stars and their history overwhelm you. These are the same stars that have watched empires crumble. The stars that have guided countless wayfarers back home. The planets and elements that watched your ancestors. These stars witnessed your birth, and you think about their eternal life, how they will bear witness to your children and grandchildren and for millennia after. There returns that unshakeable thought - that the world as we know it may crash and burn and cease to exist and yet, the stars will remain. The thought is unnerving but somehow instills an idyllic stillness in your soul. Now, as you stare at the star-studded night sky, immortal and infinite, you are once again filled with childlike awe. 

Look up enough and it is easy to believe that we are all made of stardust.