Muted Stars Research Paper

Something pulls at my heart when I look into the stars. Something in the great beyond pulls at me, calling me, begging me to claim it as my own. Something in the great nothingness that envelopes our tiny planet is beckoning me. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s a fool’s hallucination, the manifestation of a child’s dream. Maybe it is a call that was meant to be answered by men and women far greater than I’ll ever be. Maybe the signal got lost on it’s way to find Earth’s next great hero and instead it found me. Maybe all this romantic language is me trying to find some meaning in what does not exist. But maybe, just maybe, it isn’t. Maybe my heart is being pulled by a destiny far greater than I can imagine now. Maybe something does reside in that …show more content…
Whether it is through a dirty car window, where I can barely tell the difference between muted stars and specks of dust or it is far away from civilization when the stars shine their brightest, I am left speechless. Space is terrifying and beautiful and mysterious and unknowable all at once. It is the one thing I yearn to understand but am delighted to know that I never will. When I look up at the stars, I feel so unspeakably small. I am reminded, time and time again, that I do not matter. That in a universe where stars collide and die and are born again, in a universe where time is measured in eons not seconds, I am not even the blink of an eye. I am absolutely nothing. I am the same nothingness to the universe as the vastness of the universe is to me. There is nothing on this Earth, or even in space, that I can do that will affect this grand universe. I was born with little importance, I will die with little importance, and I will be forgotten. I will not be a footnote in history, I will not be a legend or a myth, I will not even be a story told over warm drinks. I will be, at best, a fading memory to someone who will just barely forget my name and just nearly remember the way my voice sounded. I will be a fuzzy memory that won’t warrant a second thought. This keeps me up at night. The idea that I won’t just die, I will cease to exist as I know it. But that feeling is not just terrifying, it is …show more content…
Perhaps imagine isn’t the right word. I convince myself that it’s nothing. Yes, yes, as far as I can see all there exists is blackness with the stars sprinkled too far away from me. But what if we weren’t alone? What if all that blackness is a cover, a cover for planets, not necessarily like ours, that hold billions of lives? What if there is a whole universe out there, crying out to the stars, praying that someone hears them? Praying that in this great universe, which is filled with nothing and to which they are nothing, there is one more voice in the darkness. Praying for us. Praying to see our hands reaching towards them, praying that they are not alone, that they are not nothing to some corner of the universe. Because, isn’t it cruel for us to suffer being nothing alone? Isn’t it cruel to know that all that surrounds us is this deep dark, intangible blackness? Oh God, I hope we aren’t alone. I hope, that in some distant corner of the universe, somewhere forgotten and lost, somewhere hidden, there is a voice. I hope that there is something, someone who wants us like we want them. Who needs us as we need them, to let us know that we are not completely alone. That this Earth isn’t all there is for us. The crushing feeling in my chest when I think of this keeps this hope in check. That feeling of true loneliness, of hopelessness, creeps into my heart everytime I dare to dream that one day it will break. My breath gets caught