A Crib-side Tale for My Lovelies
It all started with a few million billion trillion hydrogen, helium, lithium and beryllium molecules, my lovelies. They came together and formed big balls of gas, then clusters of big balls of gas. When they got too heavy with molecules, they exploded and formed denser molecules and denser layers and exploded again. Over and again, things exploded, until millions and billions and trillions of seconds passed and here you sit, looking at me with those remarkable, fabulously life-filled eyes. You’re made of the stuff of stars, you know. But don’t you worry; you won’t be exploding any time soon, my lovelies.
You are not unique in possessing the stuff of stars, my dears. In fact, I am made of them too, as are all the things that surround you. And as the stuff of stars, we are full of energy and light. We are belonging to it, yet more than just it. How it was we acquired the “more than just it” part is up to you to decide, and soon you’ll be venturing to answer that question on a quest uniquely your own. Until that time, remember this: you exist out of the energy and light that has lived on infinitely before you and will live on infinitely after you, for we are all the recycled stuff of stars, and we owe each other a certain sympathy for that, my dears. Just as my turn with this energy will someday come to an end, so shall yours, and the quest is all we will have to show for it. Someday I hope you ask me why I say all these things.
Well, you may want to know, if you are but one possessor of the millions and billions and trillions of possessors that have borrowed and will come to borrow this star stuff, why are you important, my twinkletts? Why, because you are uniquely made and uniquely “you,” so “you” that no one can be a better you. You have the grand opportunity to be the recycled star stuff that is breathing through your unique lungs and pumping essence of “you” through your unique veins! You have the opportunity to be changing the course of infinitum, to be stinking up the atmosphere with your gases, to be giving me headaches during your adolescence, to be demanding and rebellious and kind and misunderstood and brilliant, to be carrying around in you a source of energy and light that forever leads and follows your existence. You have the opportunity to be “you,” the oh-so precious you that will experience the ups and downs and roundabouts of the human endeavor as only you can do. How might you be doing that, I’d sure like to know. Yet that is not a question for me to answer, but another thing to discover while you quest. It is a quest I hope you go on with a certain attitude and resolve. Always be true to “you,” and never be afraid to know yourself deeper, my twinkletts. Whenever you do not know what to do, ask yourself what you can do and what you cannot do. Someday I hope you ask me why I say all these things.
With this one life you live, while you have this grand opportunity to borrow the recycled stuff of stars that preceded you and will succeed you, to leave your distinctive marks about the universe, you also have the opportunity to say to the millions and billions and trillions of entities that surround you, “bring it on!” my honeys. You may say this to your challenges, to your fears, to your parents (I will be delighting and raging simultaneously, to be sure), to physical exhaustion, to disease, to blindness or barrenness or bleakness. To be clear, my only requests of you are these: while on your quest of discovery, respect all of those things that are made of the stuff of stars, resolve to be true to yourself as only you can do, and tell the universe to “bring it on.” Someday I hope you ask me why I say all these things. Yes, you, my honeys, my twinkletts, my dears, my lovelies, my fabulously contrived, brilliantly alive, recycled mass of star-pooh.
