Last night, sitting at a table beneath the stars, laughing and chatting with my dinner companions, I paused, glanced upwards, and was momentarily entranced. Stars glittered like diamonds scattered across the night’s vast, obsidian blanket.
In that moment, I felt utterly humbled. The sheer scale of the universe dwarfed me, a tiny speck within its infinite mystery and wonder. Distant Jupiter shimmered, a celestial pearl suspended in a sea of stars.
As the conversation swirled around me, I felt a deep yearning. I wanted to capture it all: the warmth of the laughter, the clinking glasses, the friendship, the beauty above—the ineffable silence, the profound luminescence.
Transported by the night sky, I pulled out my phone, leaned back, craned my neck, and stretched my arms above my head. Click!
And then, distraction. Someone spoke, the beauty above faded, and I returned to Earth.
This morning, scrolling through last night’s photos, I found what appeared to be an AI-generated image: golden streaks fading into an abyss of blue. Confusion. Where did this come from? Then, I remembered that brief moment of star-struck wonder.
This blurry, indefinite photo is it. Where are the stars? Where is Jupiter? The image doesn’t reflect what I saw. Or does it?
Initially, I almost deleted it. Then, I paused, struck by a sense of wonder. How divinely orchestrated is this disconnect? The image, though not what I intended, reflects a deeper truth: all is not always as it seems.
The universe holds countless worlds beyond our own—unexplored, unknown, unseen. We spin and orbit within our own small spheres, often believing we understand everything about being human, about existing on this planet, our Earth, as it journeys around the sun. We speak of the cosmos as if we possess some special insight, forgetting that our understanding is itself a tiny, flickering light in an immeasurable darkness.
And as we spin through time, we often act as masters of our destinies, controllers of our world. We meticulously plan our lives, building our towers of ambition, rarely considering the ineffable, inexplicable nature of existence beyond our limited perspectives. We strive, we conquer, we accumulate, all while suspended on a fragile blue marble, adrift in an ocean of cosmic immensity. Our grandest achievements seem almost comical when viewed against the backdrop of eternity.
We inhabit a vast planet, orbiting within a vast solar system, of which humanity has explored only a minuscule fraction. Beyond Neptune, the universe stretches into an unfathomable unknown.
Perhaps, if we paused to breathe in the immensity of the cosmos, if we truly acknowledged our infinitesimal place within it, we might find a deeper, more grounded peace, a peace that reflects the quiet majesty of the starlight above.
I am watching a movie on the flight home. I cannot remember the name nor the actors. I think it was a sad movie. I hope so because I know I felt tears pricking at the edges of my eyelids.
This morning, as I gaze at the snowy landscape outside my office window, as I feel the chill of the air when I let Beaumont out for a romp in the backyard, as I make coffee to take back to bed to savour with my beloved so we can lie together and reminisce of the days just past, of our plans for today and dreams for tomorrow, I carry with me in everything I do, the memories of Huatulco and 
With its view of the ocean through the swaying palms, the pool at 
Surrounding the pool deck there are palm trees and azalea bushes. A grove of banana trees in bloom. Giant cacti and yellow flowering bushes stretching out to fill in any spaces between the opulence of the verdant vegetation.
Lying on my back, drifting effortlessly on the surface of the water, listening to the rustle of the palm trees above me, I imagine they are gathering the stories of the wind. Breathing in the richness and vitality of its tales of lands and people in far off places. The palms bend their heads and nod with delight at the juicy morsels the wind whispers into their branches. And the wind keeps bringing its stories. And the palms keep swaying with delight.
We spent the day beneath the whispering wind and swaying palms. C.C.slept in one of the hammocks strung between two trees as I lay on a lounge chair, read and napped and occasionally slipped into the cool inviting waters of the pool that stretched out into infinity. Above us, hawks and pelicans and ‘Pilote’ (a cousin of the vulture) swooped and glided and drifted on the wind.
Dare Boldly 