The Mobile

I was walking around campus one day at night, I really like to do that, and casually looked up at the stars. I began to contemplate everything, the everything of life. I looked up at the night sky, simple to the eye, yet supremely complex and incomprehensible. I looked up at the night sky as perhaps a child would look at a mobile hanging over the crib. A mobile that has been gently nudged into motion, swinging slowly in perfect symmetry and balance.

All things are set in marvelous, miraculous motion. And we, the awestruck infants, are dazzled by its complexity. Everything that is has been gently nudged into being. A cosmic force, a gentle touch, an epic event, a minor occurrence.

And we spin in perfect balance, never failing, never changing in absolute perfect harmony. We are but the molecules of the everything, the tiniest parts of a grand whole that constitutes a mere part of an even greater sum.

Who are we? Where are we? Why are we? In our confusion, many times we forget. This we are, here we are, because.

We are the grand composition, inseparable from the parts that constitutes us, indivisible from the whole which we make up.

All things pushed forward must stop, and so must we. The mobile must eventually stop spinning, the gentle nudge creates only a short spectacle, and so all that we are must end. Yet, while is the end we fear, it is the end that makes all things brief, beautiful, and true.

Looking up at the stars, I feel a great sense of self. As the earth spins closer to another day, around a sun that will shine for at least another morning, centered in a vast universe that is a mere pinpoint in space, I do not feel lost.

All things are brief, all things are beautiful, all things are true.