We Are All Made Of Stardust.
“I remember the first I ever went to a library. I went up to the librarian and asked for a book about stars… And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star, but really close. The stars were suns, but so faraway they were just little points of light. The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.” Yearsand many more visits to the library later, Carl Sagan, a renowned astronomer and scientist, would end up coining the term “we are all made of star-stuff”. But what did Carl Sagan mean by this?
We are all made up of stardust. Is it strange to think? To believe? That our living, breathing bodies are a complex mixture of matter that has evolved from one of the most simplistic, yet extraordinary of things, stars. Stars contain the same basic elements or matter, as our bodies do. When these exponentially large mountains of rock and heat explode, they create such energy that the event scatters matter across the universe. This act of complete destruction gives birth to the tiniest particles of planets and our life. Everything is made up of the same little pieces. The same particles that made my fingertip, made your fingertip,and made the tip of Mount Everest. Look up to the heavens and think that the twinkling wonders in the shadows have actually shaped our civilization. The stars hide from our daylight eyes, beyond the clouds and sight of the pearly gates. These dots that scatter across the sky have been the essence of what runs through our veins. Each constellation tells a deep and ancient story that entwines history and mythology. How can such mythological things be so scientifically important? These flying wonders and twinkling hopes are precisely the creators of everything that exists.
Our society has been built upon values and beliefs. To keep these values and beliefs in balance for the common good, we have set in place a government of rules and authority figures. Ancestors have built monuments as tall as the sky in appreciation for their beliefs of beings of a higher power, and where do these beings live? Why, the heavens kind sir. The heavens have almost always been the ultimate location of any belief, any God, any hopes, any dreams. In the past, the planets were named after Gods. Constellations were named for great heroes and epic adventures and angels were, and still continue to be known as, guardians who live in the heavens. With thoughts of Gods and mystical heroes, we have based everything we thought impossible to our human experience as the sky. “The sky is the limit.” Our desires for reaching these wonders have created the universe beyond our own planet.
Seeing stars fly across the murky sky gives a feeling of hope and assurance to people across the world. An ancient tradition of making a wish on a shooting star is actually projecting our deepest of desires into the universe. To many, these wishes are the most powerful of things. A wish can be as simple as something for tomorrow, or as complex as the need to change destiny itself. We sometimes do not realize that the power of a belief in one’s heart is something that can move mountains with a single glance. We are projecting our energy into the universe. Projecting ourselves upon the stars that are filled with the same exact universal energy.
We have proved that matter is the ultimate foundation of life. But now to think, is matter purely physical or does matter also make up all emotions and thoughts? If matter and energy are rooted together on a deeper level, then can thought be connected to physical objects? When the mind is connected to energy, and in turn, connected to matter, the mind can affect anything.We send our thoughts into the universe in hopes that the universe will respond.This is known as the Law of Attraction, which is the belief that “like attracts like”, that positive and negative thinking bring about positive and negative physical results. To all the things we cannot find in our lives, we send them out to the universe,just like wishing upon a shooting star. We send our thoughts on a road straight into the stars.
If matter has the possibility to make up everything, including our emotions and thoughts, is our need for returning our deepest beliefs and desires to the stars, a reaching for a connection that already exists? Is sending a prayer out for a dear friend or family member, is evoking the same energy and connection that we send to the stars? Before the age of science and discovery, has a concealed fragment of our minds always known that we came from the stars? What is hidden among these stars that we have yet to discover? If these silent mountains of rock can create such a complex society as we know today, then these stars are truly the most powerful of things. With such power, do the stars have thoughts like us? Do we share thoughts with the stars? If such an occurrence as an exploding star can release such energy and matter, then does part of our matter exist before? Do pieces of us exist before the explosion? Are humans just stars in a different physical manifestation? When we wish upon a shooting star, do they wish upon us as well?
We are all made of stardust. A statement that now might still seem incomprehensible, but next time you stare up at the stars far above us, know that what you see made you, and what you do, affects them.
Beyond the Stage 