Today is the last Bloganuary post. To sum up, I’ve been participating in a month-long challenge to write a blog post here every day, based on a writing prompt that gets sent to me daily. As this is the last day of the month, the challenge is coming to an end. So what is this last writing prompt?

How Do I Feel When I Look At The Stars?

Great question, and one I’m happy to end this series discussing.

I do love astronomy. (Note: That’s astronomy, not astrology. I’m in no way interested in woo-woo pretending that our personalities align with where the stars were when we were born. It’s a fun little thing, I suppose, but not something I take at all seriously). So anyway, I love astronomy. Astronomy was my favorite class in college, even though the physics/math was often above my head. I managed to ace the classes because I was good at memorizing the formulas and facts long enough to take tests, but much of it was not really solid information that I would ever fully understand or retain.

I remember the very first day of Astronomy 101. The professor showed us a video meant to convey the vast distance between everything in the universe. I don’t know exactly what movie he showed us, but it was something similar to this:

I walked out of the classroom that day a different person. I’d never considered the scale of the universe before, and the video we watched opened my eyes.

Looking At The Stars Makes Me Think

I recall several times I sat outside in the middle of the night with my BFF at the time, the two of us gazing at the stars, kicking back a few shots of tequila, and having intense philosophical discussions. That’s what I feel like when I look at the stars, even to this day. I feel like thinking about the vast unknowns of life and our universe. I feel like discussing those things that maybe only a shot of tequila can pull out of my mind that was hidden before. I feel like trying to understand the larger than life questions that no one has answers to.

The stars speak to me. They ask me to ponder the mysteries of life and to question everything.

I don’t spend nights staring at the stars, shooting tequila, or having deep philosophical conversations like that any longer. But the stars are still in the sky. The mysteries of life still exist. And my capacity to wonder at it all is still swirling around in my brain.

I remain fascinated by the stars, and they will be there for all the world to gaze upon for a very long time. I’m glad for that.

This post is part of the WordPress Bloganuary Challenge for 2022, where everyone participating is provided a writing prompt each day. Today’s prompt was to write about how I feel when I look at the stars.