The Mirror of the Universe

Must have written this in either 2003 or 2004, for for an assignment which I can no longer recall the details of

 

                Remembering the stars, with little effort I lift my groggy head off the study table. With the other ideas I considered for this assignment, I had to heave and pull monotonously, but now my thoughts need no help; they have taken on a life of their own, ascending like so many un-caged birds; all I must do is observe them with a powerful telescope. They begin vaguely, twilight stars glimmering in synchrony with the sights of countless evenings and midnights when I contemplated the heavenly vaults. A myriad of ideas now surface and submerge in bubbling pools of primordial elements, then spin and eddy, joining nebulas and burning asteroids. I reflect upon the cosmos.

                What, on earth, or anywhere else for that matter, can explain the meaning of the stars? Most people seem, or at least pretend to themselves, and others, to know more than they ever could. The cosmos you ask? Why, they are just random balls of nuclear fire radiating photons of heat. Heat, which gives life. Life? ... Life! Why yes, but instead let us consign the cosmos to being endless clusters of molecules, giant atoms, rocks, and bizarre gaseous elements, undergoing chemical reactions from violent fire before cooling down, and ultimately, fading away. Heat from where? How? Life? A big - no, an infinitely complex coincidence. We should must leave it at that. Fold your arms and step along, the passage advances ever forward. Don’t ask me anymore. Don’t be ridiculous, or dare try insinuate anything beyond what isn’t confined in the rectangles, brackets, and finely fragmented formulas of sciences’ leading edge hyper minds. Soon there will be cause enough to celebrate and lay to rest every un-imprisoned notion. Haven't you heard? They're on the brink of uncovering the mathematical formula which will succeed in explaining everything away as nothing!

                No, no, I’m sorry, I simply cannot accept that time and space originated like the day I crashed my car, or broke that person's heart. Do you have any idea how horrifying that idea is? Either the cosmos are utter chaos, a universal train wreck, or, or they are a testimony of ineffable, unimaginable perfection. Think seriously upon this my colleagues and friends, as should everything that walks, crawls, grows, and perhaps that which appears static too. The first option, ascribing the totality of the cosmos to mere chance and disorder, abandons us in quite a fix, because, even the size and scope of our entire world is absolutely, even hysterically meaningless when compared to the unfathomable depths of space. It goes on and on and on - which signifies what? It is of such a grand scale, that at its side, our lives are rendered completely insignificant save to finite ourselves. Are we nothing more than overgrown, dying conglomerates of cells, endowed with unnecessary emotions and dreams and loss and hopes, all soon to be lost to infinity? So, you understand, I could never accept your nightmare theory. I do not wish for us to be trapped in a vast, dark room, with no doors or windows, full of candles irrevocably fated to burn out. Afterwards what? Who yearns to be left in an utterly dark void? Nothing is equivalent only to nothing. Is this the extent of beauty and creation? Of life itself?

                I understand there are a plethora of enchaining beliefs that have caused multitudes to diverge from standing on the brink and gazing into this uncertain chasm. However, perhaps the time, the era, the hour, has come to ask with all honesty, and to choose? There are two options: Nothing or Something. Or maybe it could be described as Nothing and Allness? Either everyone of us is going to be lost in an abyss, as if we never were, or, there is no void except for that inside us. Which is it? There are endless paths, but eventually they lead to the same place.

                So maybe you see the problem of perceiving the universe as a big mistake, a roll of the dice? When I ponder it head on, I admit I wish to hide from the dilemma, since it stirs in me a primordial, intangible dread that danger lurks somewhere out there in the deeps. No, I don’t mean aliens, or even black holes. Matter, science, astronomy, biology, etc - these things standing by themselves force me feel like I’m on the verge of disintegrating into the immensity of such doubts. So small, insignificant, forgotten by nothingness. If you didn't know before, I tell you it's true, how horrendous in scope the heavenly skies can seem to the conscious eye. Understand it is easy to see the stars as terror-filled fires, separated by frozen gulfs. After all, we are the product of their deadly explosions, and at times we do very awful things to each other and ourselves during our short lives on this suspended, blue orb where there is no up, no down, no east or west. Tell me if we cannot blame the natural forces that created and sustain us to be forever flawed? Reason to fear? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

                But really, in the wake of the classes, textbooks, and lectures, what is one supposed to understand about the cosmos? Will they all eventually burn out or destroy themselves? What conclusions can be found amidst the entirety of our studies from the Mayan star-seekers unto the NASA researchers today? You can deliberate forever, because the cosmos are forever, in dimension at least. Therefore I’ll try to find a position or solid ground, since wondering about this solely rationally and intellectually will lead us, and this assignment, nowhere. Ok, let's gather and find the answer. I'm not certain from where this wild inspiration is rising, but I promise you we can achieve much right now without needing to have our hair grow long and white in a laboratory, or waiting for our great-to-the-tenth-power grandchildren to be born.

                Earlier I mentioned there are times I've felt we’re trapped in a big dark room with fluttering candles. However, the truth cannot be assailed: there are no walls, no ceiling, no up or down, maybe not even right or wrong, at least not as we understand it now; there's only round and round and round. A circle. It follows that wherever we’re headed we’re going the right way, not further from the door we seek. And I ask you: where do the black holes travel to if not to where all the gloriously blinding light emanated to begin with?  Imagine the illumination of such a place. And this dimension too, can be bound by no walls.

                Even if I (not an astronomer), along with every single astronomer that ever lived, were teetering on the verge of insanity in desperate endeavor to understand this dilemma, I know we’d be fooling ourselves. Yes. To believe even for an instant that the stars are madness is missing the mark - it is striking at shadows. Why? Somehow I know with absolute certainty, that even one person, just one, no matter who, down to the most dislikable and awful, is more precious than every galaxy out there combined. Yes, it is in us, and for us. We are the real stars. And unlike the cosmos we will never be extinguished. Insignificant in size as we may seem, it matters not an iota, for no sun will ever shine as bright and everlasting as the smiles of true, heartbreaking, joy. Nor are the vastest gulfs between any worlds or solitary stars as profound as the soul of someone who weeps, crying out, pierced by griefs.

                When you’re struck with melancholy or laden with hopelessness, viewing the cosmos can indeed be an ominous sight. To the other end of the spectrum, when you're in compassion, or in love, then your realization is unclouded that the moon and all the celestial beacons are the precious gems and pearls which were made for us by a mysterious, but far greater power, which encompasses us at every angle, round, round, and round. For only love travels faster than the speed of light. Love: it is only a word to us now, yet one day I believe we will understand the infinite perfection it conceals. Love transcends the confusion of religion, hell, and heaven, with perfection. Love is the answer behind every shadow, every question we can ever have. Love goes so far as to answer itself. But sometimes, as the human explorers we are, we may become confused. At anytime, looking up at the stars at night, we are really searching, and what we find ourselves contemplating are our own reflections in the mirror of the universe.

                Fear not then. When we have found the meaning behind the answers we seek, that there is solely one force we can known, it will make us smile, and in turn we will discover the smile above, everywhere, that has always been there, even before space and time.