Hands up! I confess I'm a massive Shakespeare geek and have always adored the King Lear quote "it is the stars, the stars above us, govern our conditions." There's so much romanticism and mysticism tied up in the stars and space; it's such a beautiful canvas looking down on us, witnessing our every move. The sky is so transient yet constant. It appears so tangible yet remains entirely out of our realm. It is the subject of hundreds of stories and poems yet only a handful of people have ever even visited it. To me, our fascination with space is a living and breathing demonstration of the old saying 'the grass is greener on the other side.' I've mentioned here before how geeky I get over a new NASA documentary or space mission that I can stay up all night observing firsthand. If I'd been alive when the Space Race was underway I would have been getting goosebumps every single day! I think our opinions of space and our continual fascination with the unknown parallels our views on our own lives.
Our lives are a journey, full of moments and memories and decisions; sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes right, sometimes wrong. But each choice, each second weaves together to make the quilting of our lives. On occasions I still have sleepless nights worrying if I've made the right decisions and I'm only twenty! It is human nature to question, to postulate, to over-analyse but sometimes we just have to go with it, remember that the sun sets and the sun rises every day; each day is a fresh start if we want it to be. Synonymously, each road can end wherever we decide; we can get lost sometimes but eventually we'll find our way (even if we wish sometimes life came fitted with a satnav for quicker solutions!) As W. E. Henley said, we are all the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls.
There is a quote from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that I completely fell in love with the first time I heard it that kind of fits everything I'm trying to say here: "For what it's worth: it's never too late [or in my case] too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."
"All men have the stars," he answered "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You -you alone- will have the stars as no one else has them." (The Little Prince) Swoon.
