I'm sure everyone who walks this planet had their heart cave in deeply when looking at the night sky. We yearn for the vast cosmos, because we once had a home there. Now, locked inside these flesh avatars, we build, we heave, we create, we stretch our capabilities: all to get closer 2 the stars.
But maybe this whole time, the cosmos was just yearning for itself through us.
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Its creation wasn't anticipated. It was made a month and a half from posting this, Two days before my birthday. Up till that breaking point, I've been feeling something strange, grandiose, and dangerous churning in my stomach. In a time of disillusionment and confusion, I was a danger to myself.
This whole time, the human experience i always adored and cherished...became an overbearing weight. What was it really? Oh, nothing in particular. Just dishes, laundry, feeding and bathing my body. I felt a collapse, as if even this was too much. No, it was too little. In times when all I could do was tasks around the house, My heart yearned violently for something much, much grander. And when things got just a little too quiet, i started remembering what it was like before this. Before "human".
I recalled many dreams I had, the songs I heard before birth. And one stood out in particular: I once dreamt that I was a planet. I called the vast, vast cosmos my home. I had brothers and sisters, many companions, many-many distant stars calling to me. I remembered what it was like, to be a part of the music of the heavenly spheres. To be everything. Something that I surely wouldn't have remembered if all we humans ever were, was just mortal flesh. I longed to be reunited with the grandiose.
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And in that moment, this longing tore me apart. If i were 2 offer an Earthly analogy: it felt as though I was abandoned as a child in a store with endless isles, stranded and overwhelmed with fear and confusion, i simply collapse to the floor and pray to be picked up soon. "Take me back home, I'm tired of this shell".
I'm tired. Tired.
I had read a poem by Dylan Thomas: It became famous after that grandiose film "Interstellar", but I happened 2 come across it way before knowing what it was featured in.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
That alone? That was enough 2 wake something in me that I didn't understand. But it moved me, It moved me.
In that moment I flew off the hinges entirely. I had collapsed to the floor and wailed and sobbed, probably louder than i've ever wailed since my own birth; loudest noise my human body could produce, deafening even to myself. "It" was tearing through my body in order 2 get out.
What was it really? I still can't find the perfect worlds 2 explain. Before i had noticed, i started crawling. For anything, anything that could tether me to this Earth.
"Why shouldn't i leave now? Why shouldn't i give up my body to return to EVERYTHING?" is something i kept thinking for days, weeks. And now, I was looking for anything that could serve as an answer.
So my shaking, violent hands dug into the cover of a large sketchpad i owned: the largest one. I don't remember having a single coherent thought. I remember my own screaming: "I wanna go home, I wanna go home", that's all. I could barely see in front of me, but my hands were making circular motions on the paper with crayons. Messy, animal-like motions. Observing my own hands move by their will, I was drawing the Spheres. Planets of our solar system.
The cosmos is vast, the human self cannot even begin 2 comprehend how vast. But out of this infinity, my heart had chosen this Solar system. My big brother Saturn, my little sister Venus. The music of the heavenly spheres. They became so dear to me, the primordial emotion was too grand 4 this body.
By the time i wore myself out after hours of breakdown, i was left with shabby circles, crazed depictions of our solar system. That was my attempt at tethering.
"Why should I stay?" i kept asking myself. There was only one person outside of me that could answer this question in my times of dying.
My sister. My sister who is thousands of miles away, far across the oceans.
I don't know what her day looked like up till that point, But i had sent her a distress call.
"Hey. Could you please remind me, what am i here for? On Earth?"
Haha, she instantly replied. She understood instantly that i wasn't joking. She felt distress.
This she said to me:
"You are here on this Earth 2 experience its infinity, and the infinite love that you could find"
"You are an example to me of a person who will find meaning even in sorrow and carry it with dignity, you know? To me, youre an example of boundless strength"
"You need this experience. Remember everything you love on this Earth, even if it SEEMS like there's nothing"
I was starstruck. How effortlessly she reminded me of all that is well on planet Earth. How dearly i hold her. No wonder she'd been my tether all along: What could possibly keep you on this planet other than Love? It's the only thing worth anything in the end.
She snapped me out of it, sobered me up.
"You cannot return to infinity until you've experienced your own boundaries"
She returned infinity into the shape of a human being. That's what I've been all along, never separate; that's what everything is: Infinity, expressed through a unique, irreplaceable shape.
How could i have forgotten? That's what planets are, too. That's the force that births the stars, and brings them to explode. That's the force with which we love, with which we sing; with which we do our, at times, daunting daily tasks, like laundry and dishes :-)
Haha, my sister was outdoors at the time, and though it had been sunny for her up until that point, she messaged me: "Oh, the weather suddenly got much worse, like it was raging with you. I feel you now, and I feel in the weather your wildness and ferocity."
Like storms on beloved Jupiter. She found that signal, she felt me across continents and seas.
That must account for something. That must mean I'm still worth saving: The human self is worth keeping alive.
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I laughed lots and lots after this talk with her. My cosmic pain is dwarfed by her love.
I laughed lots and lots. Then it hit me, and I thought: Oh, no no no ! What are you crying about? How foolish it is to think you're trapped inside a human body at all. How silly, to think that humans are separate from infinity ! We are a result of it, have you forgotten?
How silly & adorable it is 4 the Universe 2 put itself into a shell, and then cry about putting itself in a shell ! Hahaha, this whole time I wasn't separate from it: I was "it" yearning for itself, through an experience unlike any other. A human being on a Pale Blue Dot, suspended in a sunbeam.
The truly one thing that could not be replaced: Earth. Nowhere is there life like here on Earth. Nowhere else will you find oceans as abundant as ours, songs as earnest and eternal as the Earth's.
Yes, I became this for a reason. To feel the joy! And joy has a habit of returning .
If we are all the Universe experiencing itself, then what a beautiful joy it is: To gaze up at the sky and see myself reflected in all directions. Cosmos looking through the human eyes, cosmos feeling itself through planetary oscillations. Cosmos feeding itself ideas, cosmos finding infinite ways to create.
Infinite love.
Creation. That desire drove my body when i let the brakes loose. It's one proof cosmos is still in me: Its purpose was creation. When i look at our solar system, I think to myself: What a lovely work of art!
I am blessed to experience the same force that creates worlds flowing through my hands, extending itself to infinity, adding to the beauty i already admired about this planet.
When i had put myself back on my two feet, i decided to turn the messy circles and scribbles into something more elaborate, and do it from Joy. Do it from love. I saw myself be born again on the spread of paper: From nothing into something: drawing like looking in a mirror.
The confusion became something in the end. And that is why you're able to look at what i produced now! This is the exact purpose of this existence.
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I don't deny that tiring days will creep up again. But...Please, if you ever forget why you're here, find something with enough gravity 2 tether you 2 Earth. Remember that you're precious!
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