I’ve been thinking a lot about stars.
The soft, breathy voice of Cliff Edwards singing “When you wish upon a star…” float into my ears as the title card and credits roll for the animated rendition of the Italian tale. Geppetto, the elderly woodworker, sees a wishing star from his tiny bedside window and on his knees wishes that his creation, the wooden boy, Pinocchio, would come to life as a real boy. A far fetched dream. “A very lovely thought, but not at all practical.” Jiminy Cricket yawned as they shut their eyes to sleep.
Growing up Catholic, I was told that three wise men from the Orient saw a star rising in the east, which they followed to pay homage to the one who is born King of the Jews. A star is placed atop the Christmas tree to represent the same star that guided these men to Jesus. I sat below our artificial tree in awe of the transparent star that was lit and twinkled. In the dark of night, I often stared at the sky, struggled to find the same star that would lead me to Jesus, to heaven.
Ancient cultures in then Babylon, Hellenistic Egypt, Greece and the Islamic empires have used the stars too. They’ve looked up to the sky, watching the twinkling wonders, for guidance in every day affairs. As learned in history classes, Magellan, Christopher Columbus or Cristobal Colón as he is known in other parts of the world, used the stars with the help of the astrolabe, an ancient astrological tool used to navigate the unknown, untravelled waters towards lands of spices and gold.
I started learning to read tarot cards last year to help me navigate the murky, unexplored waters of in-between. The tarot is a system of cartomancy, or using a deck of cards to gain insight, with 78-cards. It is divided into two parts: the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana.
Part of the Major Arcana, the 22-cards which represent human archetypes, is The Star. A naked woman, kneeling on the lush ground, with one foot in a tiny pond and the other on the grass, pours two pitchers of water into the pond and the earth. An excerpt from the booklet of the original Rider Waite-Smith deck says that The Star card “suggests hope and bright prospects in the future.”
Wishes. Dreams. Hope. Direction. The stuff that stars are made of that keeps me looking up every night.
Living in the city, deep in the heart of Texas, though prairie sky is indeed wide and high, with all the bright lights from homes, buildings, cars, store signage, billboards, it is difficult to see the stars at night. Sometimes, when the haze and the clouds clear, I could see the faint twinkle of a few constellations such as Orion’s belt, the Big Dipper. The brighter stars’ lights dominate limits of my human vision, despite the billions that live in space.
I looked out the car window as we drove through the dark of the New Year’s night on the emptiness of the Interstate 40, from our short getaway at Monument Valley en route to Albuquerque for a stopover. The absence of human life and activity, save for the 18-wheelers sharing the road with us, made the darkness even darker. And it is in the darkest of nights that the stars shine the brightest.
A few weeks back, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) successfully launched into space. It is now lodged into the infiniteness of the universe, transmitting the most ethereal images of space in modern day history. This sent me down the rabbit hole on the science of stars that started with the NASA Instagram post of the Southern Ring planetary nebula.
I was mind blown to learn that when a star is dying, it is when shines the brightest.
Death seems like a funny thing. Not just for stars, but for us too. We know it is inevitable. We all will die some day and yet we refuse to come face to face with it. Only when we reckon with our own death - the disappearance on this earth, away from our family and friends to be sucked in by the vast darkness, is when we choose to release all inhibitions, expectations and then shine the brightest.
It is also when the people around you get to see you. They now know and see what they’ve got, then imagine what it would be like when you’re gone and proceed to actually do better. Death makes you shine. See? Funny.
But isn’t that sad? A little too late? What if we don’t need to die to shine?
Another thing I’ve learned going down this rabbit hole is that the death of a star determines what lives next. Once a star dies, it either expands into a planetary nebula or explodes into a supernova. Dark matter, helium, dust and other elements swirls around the energy of the dead star until it eventually turns into something. Newer stars, galaxies, maybe even universes are born.
From death comes new life.
But imagine if all stars just keep on living and never ever die. Then there will never be anything new. The light they shine brightest as they approach inevitable death in the darkness is serving their purpose, their very existence. If one is able to see that light and give them something, then the life of that star was not wasted, but a purpose fulfilled.
That’s why we have all these cemeteries and also, All Souls’ Day across Christian communities, the Araw ng Patay in the Philippines or Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, to commemorate and shine light on those who have past. An earthly reminder of legacies for families and loved ones who continue to live. A shining star, a dying star that reminds you to keep on living as something new awaits in the not so distant future.
My head started spinning with this new knowledge. I stepped away from all that reading and scrolled through the images from JWST. I swooned at the “Cosmic Cliffs” of the Carina nebula, billions of stars shining against the dark sky with what I thought as baby stars dancing on the swirl of dust and matter below. It broke my heart that I could only admire and stare at the image for no more than five seconds.
I was overwhelmed, feeling like utterly small and insignificant speck against the vastness of the universe. Maybe we’re not meant to look at ALL of the stars at the same time. Maybe one, two or a couple is more than enough to make wishes, fuel our dreams, hope and guide us into a direction.
I looked into my personal death and darkness. When like a dying star, I collapsed and imploded into myself. But now that I’ve seen it for what it was - a mess and a message, I started sharing, slowly shining some light into what I went through, that I chose to quit my job to prioritize taking care of myself, health and sanity. A soft twinkle into the vast space of my own galaxy.
A friend reached out to me, asked if I could read her cards. I happily obliged as this brings me so much joy - to share the power of the cards to clear out the mind’s cobwebs. The she told me “You are proof that quitters can win.”
I was taken aback, flattered and puzzled. I buckle at the idea that I’ve won a medal, a trophy, the lottery because I don’t feel like it yet. There are days that I still question my chosen path and why I am still here and not there, whether I am even doing enough or need to push myself to do so much more.
Maybe we don’t need to look up to the sky to see the stars. Maybe there are shining stars already around our orbit. That we are just so overwhelmed with the expanse that we gloss over what’s within reach. The stars need not be the balls of mass, billions of light years away, swirling in space, but someone in our own universe.