People take stars for granted.

They offer the deep blue heavens a passing glance, a remark on the constellations, sketched across the magnificent canvas by the light hand of a celestial painter.

They don’t stare at that seemingly insignificant pinprick of light until it is burned into their very being. They don’t see the stars and understand the magnitude of what they mean.

A star is a hot ball of gas, twinkling and shining from a distance. It was born from the empty abyss of space trillions of years ago and died in a massive explosion millions of years ago, and finally its death throes reach us in a weak sputter of life.

In this remarkable universe— constantly changing, always moving, with countless stars living and glowing and dying—who is not to say that somewhere, across the universe, there is not someone pondering the same questions as me?