I miss the stars

I miss the stars. There was something so calming about them. About laying back in a lawn chair and looking up at the pinpricks of light shining through the ebony shell of night. The night sky is constant. I could look up, and see the exact same night sky as somebody thousands of miles away. Maybe that’s why I feel a sense of connection, when I stare up at the stars. For that short, brief window of time, I share the same view as somebody I’ll never meet. There’s something about the stars, some emotion they arouse that you can’t quite name, some feeling that you can’t quite describe. I look up, and it’s like a shock wave hits me. It’s so vast, so big, and at that moment I realize how small I am, how small the entire human race is! But it’s not the kind of small that makes me feel afraid, rather the opposite. I feel a connection with, well, everything. Like no matter how small something is, or I am, it was still created. The fact that in a universe where there are galaxies that dwarf our own, something so small as an ant can survive astounds me. There’s absolutely no point for something so small to exist in something so big and vast, and yet it does! It makes me feel a sense of meaning, like I don’t know what my purpose is in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that I am alive and that I am able to type these very words means that me existing means something.

But lately, I haven’t been able to see the stars. Those puny pinpricks are covered up by the loud light of the city. And it makes me kinda sad. That there’s this awe-inspiring, reality-shattering, mind-blowing view right above us, and we can’t see it simply because we’re too loud. Too bright. And man, I miss the stars.