text: Stars I look up to the stars. They flash unbelievably beautiful across the sky and bring back memories of when I was only a child. I remember chasing Spicy, the ugly but lovable dog, across the field surrounding the tiny house we owned. I would run after him, laughing at the odd way he moved his legs until I fell upon the embrace of the grass. The softness of the leaves would brush against my skin, and the wetness of the droplets of water that permeated them would make me feel slightly cold. I would look up to the sky as Spicy fell on top of me, and dream of a life beyond my tiny, minuscule existence. A dream of a distant planet, where I could hide for forever with someone who loved me and live in perpetual happiness. We would have a tiny house, just like mine, in a prairie, by a lake. But I wouldn’t feel alone. I wouldn’t feel unloved. I would be whole. As you can see, kids are not very smart: there is no such planet. There is Earth. You might be familiar with it and, if that’s the case, I’m sorry. I’m sure you didn’t do anything to deserve it. Living is painful. Take me: what do I have? I live alone, in a tiny apartment, in a dirty city, with more than a few rats. Getting up every morning is easy, though, as the pulsating sound of gunshots outside my window makes sure to wake me up. Falling asleep is hard, not because of any sounds outside my apartment but, instead, because my brain plays with me, and keeps me awake for hours. I have a fertile imagination. A plethora of scenarios, from my own death to my ascendancy to the presidency, buzz in my mind as if I was inside a beehive. The hardest nights are when I imagine the planet with the prairie again. I imagine a different life, one that is kinder, gentler, and more loving. I wish I could stop doing that. Those thoughts are only wishes, dreams, memories of a non-existent present. Reminders of my ineptitude at happiness. I have a date tonight. Nervousness courses through my arteries, an electrifying force obliterating everything else, guaranteeing the sweatiness of my hands and the idiocy of my jokes. I’ve been on many dates, and every time I feel this way. Maybe I still have hope? Rationality has never been my strongest feature anyways. I am a dreamer, a hopeful at heart. I try to tell myself “Stop. Nothing will come of this and you know it. Stop caring.” Sweat continues to profusely leak out of every pore in my skin, and I sigh. There’s no stopping human hope; it’s one of our worst, sickest features. Hope makes people unhappy because of its lover: disappointment. And out of the love of hope and disappointment, more hope is always born. Which always comes with disappointment. It’s a vicious cycle, obliterating happiness and contentment at every step of the way. It’s humans’ greatest pitfall. It’s a scandal. A horror. A shocking disgrace. But maybe it’s also what saves us from ourselves. It’s what softens the edges of existence, and allows us to go on. If we were just content with the conditions we were originally given, there wouldn’t be cities. No roads, cars, TVs, computers, cellphones. No paintings, sculptures. No books, movies, poems. No language. No humanity as an entity. We would just be happy to exist, hopeless and content, surviving. Unhappiness is truly the key to the success of the human species. The date goes well. A kiss at the end seemed quite viable, so I went for it. It felt good. Time itself seemed to slow down, eager to observe. Suddenly the tininess of my apartment seemed unimportant. The violence outside my windows innocuous. The rats in the ventilation system friendly. Everything still existed, but all outside our kiss was trivial. The sex was good. Very good. Feeling the closeness of someone on that level truly made me doubt whether humans are really built as a standalone product. Whether some cultures were right in saying that we are built in pairs, and spend our entire lives trying to complete one another. Trying to find that perfect match, that inexplicable connection. And sometimes failing eternally. The thing is, this time, I succeeded, I felt it. Maybe the other half of me being completed, maybe the inexplicability of life feeling a little bit less dizzying as I wouldn’t be alone. That feeling was intense. Irreplaceable. All-consuming. The stars look more beautiful than ever. The possibilities portrayed in their shininess are boundless. The imitability of their beauty is infinitesimal. Their eternity certain. They bring structure and perspective to my otherwise chaotic life; the mundaneness of my problems is made clear by their condescending glimmer. In this moment, they are the only reminder I have that the heart-wrenching way I feel is actually unimportant. It is inconsequential. Insignificant. The universe is so vast, so ungraspably infinite, that our lives on this tiny planet cannot be more than a footnote in history; they are essentially meaningless. And yet the connection I felt seemed to defy the universe’s imposingness. It was an explosion of energy in my life, one that could rival the massive giants burning millions of light-years away. The big-bang itself seemed less impressive now. Our connection was like an inflection point in time-space, a unique moment in the history of the universe. The center of all timelines. The bastion of all that is good and beautiful in an otherwise bleak world. The beginning and the end of life itself; a coil in the fabric of time. It was my meaning, my purpose. It was over within the year. Parting ways was one of the most painful things I have ever done. My heart had been taken from me, and suddenly it was shoved back inside my chest cavity. Every artery, every vein, reattached a bit incorrectly, a bit off. A universe upended. The meaning of my existence seemed to have ceased to exist. I looked up to the stars and searched for a different meaning. I looked desperately into the vastness of the universe and was unable to find one. We are too small, too insignificant. We are bound to futility. It took a while, and a lot of pain, for me to understand that meaning is just another human invention. There’s the wheel, computers, doors, light bulbs, and meaning. We cannot possibly find an intrinsic meaning to our existence if we are the origin of it. Meaning flows from within humanity and changes significantly over time, as we do. We should not be doomed to perpetually seek an extraneous answer to our existence; we can create our own meaning. I have begun to find that much more powerful than a predetermined answer. Much more impactful than a higher-power-given purpose. Human-given purpose is what now guides me. I look down from the stars. Today they are a reminder of the improbability of my own existence, of how remarkable I am. Of the mastery of my destiny. Of my aptitude for living. I feel good, I feel powerful. I feel whole. Living is hard, and life on Earth is hard, but I don’t resent it anymore. The hardships fuel me instead.