~ Writing Contest ~ remix-2

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☆*:..｡.Shine.｡.:*☆ A speculation of stars by @Kitty_Cat19375 ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿ Have you ever looked at the stars? I mean, not just glanced up one time at a drive-in movie theater and saw a few shiny pinpricks. I mean, have you ever stayed up way, way past your bedtime and sat by the campfire, the taste of burnt marshmallows lingering in your mouth, and craned your head up and saw the Milky Way? Saw the countless little white dots blending together and managed to pick out Orion's belt? It's not something you can do in the city. Actually, it's not something you can do in a town of forty thousand people, like mine. Most nights, I can barely pick out a few. But there's something magical about stars. About the fact that that dim light you disregard tonight left its star before there was breathable oxygen on Earth. That same billion-year-old light gets reflected off the lenses of your eyes, leaving you a little wiser, and then it's gone. Stars are older and stronger and bigger and more significant to human history than dinosaur bones, but you can't put starlight in a museum. Stars live for the moment, because they live so long until they don't. Humans have seen the same stars every night for thousands of years. The same stars that ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Indian kids lay down on their backs and made up stories about, and then grew up and told stories to their kids, and on and on, so that we still remember them. The same stars that guided slaves to freedom and explorers back home, and that, if you look closely enough, you'll see out your window in a matter of hours. These stars that are so important to the development of our species and to our lives and to our universe can not be bottled and kept. Because nothing lives forever, especially not stars. They burn so long and bright and strong, and then they're gone. But when a star dies, its light keeps shining. And when its light stops shining, I know that you or your children or your children's children will remember when they saw it and carry that fraction of its light with them every day. Because you, in a way, are also a star. And I don't mean that in the cheasy was your third-grade teacher told you. I mean that in the way that right now, you're alive. But later, you'll be dead. And I know that sounds shocking, but people die. Your parents will die, and your family and friends and your cat and your old fish that you can't believe is still going after twelve years will die. And people keep dying, and they don't come back. One second, they're alive, and you don't even think of the possibility of being without them, and the next, they just stop living, and that's that. But like stars, you can't put a person in a museum. You can't put that time you snuck away and jumped in the pool together during Thanksgiving in a museum. You can't put the distinct way their speech tumbled out of their mouth and how their eyes sparked when they saw you in an exhibit behind glass. You can't bottle up memories and grief and put them on a shelf to visit when you feel like it. Just like a star, they are part of you. Every person you've ever met is part of you, and you can't let that stop you from living your life, because a star can't stop shining when it feels like it. It's bright right up until it isn't. But its light still shines, and you have to make sure that you shine for every star you've seen go out, because you owe it to them. You owe it to keep shining and being you to everyone on Earth, because what would the sky be without stars?