From the Stars to Eternity

There are many things which when I think about them, just make me stop in complete wonder. One of the most amazing to me is the thought that every thing, you, me, every one and every thing including our earth, are all made up of the remnants of dead and exploded stars.

I mean think about it, over billions of years, millions upon millions of stars forming, living out their celestial lives, then exploding in huge blasts of matter and energy. Then this matter slowly over time gathering into yet more stars with planets forming around them. More time and more energy and life begins to form. Over hundreds of millennium life evolves all the while more stars exploding and raining down their remains across vast stretches of space.

The fact that every particle of every person on earth was once a particle of some distant star just boggles my mind. Not just people though, every animal every plant every grain of sand, all the gold and gems that we count as valuable, all of it was once part of a star. It's very humbling and at the same time exhilarating beyond belief.

To know we are all made of star dust that may have come from the farthest corners of the universe makes me feel like in my own insignificant way, that I am a part of everything that is, has been and will be. It makes me so much more than just me. I am a hundred million super novas spread out over vast expanses of time. I am every person who ever lived before me. I am the sun, the moon and the planets. What's more, everyone else out there is also a combination of all these wonderful things.

When I compare these facts to the pitiful myths of religion, it makes me wonder how a mere god could ever compare to the reality of things. Why would I want to spend an eternity worshipping at the feet of some spoiled selfish arrogant supposed deity, when I can be dispersed over expanses of space and time to possibly become part of the particles that make up some future being in some other place? This to me is my mortality, this is where I would go when I die. Though my awareness may be left behind, my body, or at least the atoms which make up my body, will carry on.