Stars

 

I used to love looking at the stars.
Not Hollywood stars — although, fine, some of them are enjoyable to observe.
(Especially if they have British accents. If a man says anything in a London accent, Erin is gone. James McAvoy? Over. I may as well fade into the wallpaper and start paying rent there.)

I mean the real stars.
The ones overhead.
The ones that don’t care about red carpets or Rotten Tomatoes scores because they’ve been burning for billions of years just to show off and remind us:
You are tiny.
And also miraculous.
Deal with it.

When I was a kid, I learned about stars the old-fashioned way:
Encyclopedias.

Not Wikipedia.
Not Google.
I’m talking burgundy-and-blue hardcovers that weighed the same as a small refrigerator.

We didn’t have the whole set, of course — we were a “grab bag of random letters” family.
But we had So–Sz.
And So–Sz was my sacred text.

Some letters got a whole book (M, S).
Some letters had to share like siblings forced into the same bedroom (Q–R).
But my beloved “Stars” entry?
I read it until the pages were basically whispering,
“Sweet mercy, kid… please go outside.”

Fast-forward to my teaching days when I used to drag entire families into the cold with telescopes and gritty hot chocolate.
We’d stand out there, toes freezing off, looking at Jupiter’s moons.
And for one magical night, kids who couldn’t focus for five minutes in daylight stood perfectly still, staring at something millions of miles away like astronauts in tiny winter coats.

Back then, stars were about science.
The speed of light — 186,000 miles per second.
The math.
The fact that the light I was seeing left its star years ago.
Maybe during Lincoln.
Maybe during Joan of Arc.
Maybe some medieval kid also looked up and thought, “Whoa,” not knowing his star wouldn’t reach me until I was inhaling hot chocolate powder through a straw and yelling at nine-year-olds to stop touching the telescope.

But now?

Now when I walk Rosie at 5 a.m. and glance up, I don’t think about photons or history or my beloved So–Sz volume.

I just think:
Beautiful.

Some stars cluster.
Some stand alone.
Some blaze bright like show-offs.
Some just shimmer politely.

They live. They die.
They’ve seen everything.
And still — they shine.

Noticing beauty won’t fix your life.
But it might save your day.
And sometimes saving the day is enough.

You don’t have to solve your entire existence before breakfast —
your marriage, your shame, your to-do list, your future, your weird bank account math.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop, look up, and whisper,
“That’s beautiful.”

Salvation isn’t always grand.
Sometimes it’s just a slant of light on your kitchen floor.
The sound of geese honking their messy encouragement overhead.
The shimmer of stars at 5 a.m.

Noticing isn’t shallow.
Noticing is survival.

Because when I get scared about the future —
tomorrow, next year, all the years after that —
I look up.

And for a moment, I remember:

Beauty outlasts fear.
Light has been traveling for centuries
just to reach my tired eyes
at this exact second.
The universe arranged itself —
galaxies, supernovas, spinning planets —
to deliver one tiny flicker of wonder
so I could keep going.

And maybe that’s the real gut punch:

We don’t have to solve everything.
We don’t have to predict everything.
We don’t have to be everything.

We just have to notice what’s already here.

The stars don’t ask us to understand them.
They don’t ask for comprehension or credentials.
They ask for one thing:

Look up.

Maybe hope
is just another word for noticing.