How to Identify the Constellations

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

July 2023

Before you know how to identify the constellations, you must ask yourself, “what patterns am I carrying out in my actions?” If someone were gazing at me from another universe and saw my behavior, how would they label my movements? Would I be seen as a violent hunter, a timid crab, or someone with a split personality that appears as 2 people in one body. The stars are our giant Rorschach test, only we have inherited our associations from ancestors who lived long ago. Do the stories of their time still hold weight in the face of all that is bearing down upon humanity? Are the strength of a bull and the courage of a hybrid man-horse still the images that will inspire us into taking the right actions? If intelligent life is observing humanity from afar and waiting for the right moment to intervene and save us from ourselves, will our movement inspire them to come sooner or force them to take caution? 

The stars never asked to be lumped into a community with neighbors who live hundreds of light years away, just because their illusory intimacy stirs the imagination of the human mind.  Maybe this is what is unfolding in this grand social experiment called the United States of America.  Immigrants and refugees from the furthest reaches of the planet flung together in an identity which excluded most of us from the process of formation.  We orbit one another, reaching for this seemingly impossible ideal of unity, clinging to the notions of who we think we are. Meanwhile, those who remain of the original inhabitants look on in dismay at the destructive actions of these foreign bodies, which have come tearing through this solar system like a gargantuan meteor shower. Maybe there is hope. Maybe some of these collisions of destruction may create clouds of dust that will one day coalesce into a moon, a body that will provide rhythm and stability to life and reflect the light in the times when it is most needed. Maybe this time of death is precisely what is needed for each of our withering bodies to remember who we are, the dust of stars, destined to be reborn in any and every conceivable configuration until we stop trying to label one another and simply enjoy the beauty of our collective presence.