The Legend of Shooting Stars

18 July 2012

I don’t care what anybody says—there is magic all around us. You don’t believe me? Gaze with me at the night sky, at the sparkling fragments of diamonds and gems that have scattered the blackness. Wait patiently, and you will experience the rebel star that refuses to dance in its divinely designated place on the heavenly dance floor: he is called the Shooting Star. He races through the others, and they are quite taken aback by his borderline-rude disregard for the way things were set up. He does not care, for he knows his purpose. He stands for what the other stars cannot.

He is the life-changing spark of creativity a Parisian artist had while sitting in his dim apartment and gazing at the atmosphere for some inspiration. He is the simple hope of a child clutching his mother’s hand as she tells him to make a wish on the otherworldly glimmers his young eyes widen at. He is the tear drop of a young, tired lover whose passion has turned out to be an utter disappointment and waste of time. He is the laughter of an elderly man living alone in his nursing home as he realizes that there are still simple joys in this life to be had, even in being alone. He is the high school dropout’s fierce yearning for significance and to travel far away from the suburban imprisonment he was born into. He is those moments that are born in fire, that define the impossible-to-predict course of our wild stories. 

The constellations may be noble and comforting in their stance, in their orderly drifting across the universe to a rhythm that will always be. Yet, the miracle of the shooting star is what humanity really needs; the legend of the shooting star is all the unexplainable messiness of life, and the irrational hope that anchors our hearts to our dreams.