By Lina, TIWP Student

For a second, I thought they could actually see me.
That the stars were gazing down at me in quiet anticipation, as though they had mailed me a gift I had not yet learned how to open.
I was never one to presume the universe was aligning itself for me. I never believed I was chosen by some celestial being, or that I was the protagonist of some grand story written before I arrived.
I was just someone
 who happened to be someone
 by some improbable accident.
I knew that.
And yet, they looked down on me with such tenderness. With the kind of love that makes you believe, if only for a moment, that something matters.
That you matter.
People assume I do not pray because I’ve never believed in their God.
But I do pray.
I cling to every word of my prayers as though they are something solid enough to hold onto, and I send them upward anyway—addressed to the universe, to the stars, to whatever might be listening.
Perhaps no one is.
I acknowledge that.
But the only thing that can bring peace, or some version of sanity to my soul
Is to know that my dreams are out there
That I am heard and that I have made some small bid on my desires
And I do wonder if that is all religion has ever been.
Peace in believing you and your dreams are significant
The human need to believe that what we experience means something—that our grief, our love, our suffering, our small acts of kindness are not simply flashes of consciousness disappearing into an indifferent universe.
Because, rationally, we know.
In a century, most of what consumes us now will be forgotten. In a thousand years, even the things we consider monumental will have dissolved into obscurity. Eventually, every name becomes unfamiliar. Every monument crumbles. Every life ends.
It does not take a genius to understand that.
But people do not want to walk through life conscious of their own insignificance.
We do not want to experience something weighing so heavy on our conscious only for it to be named trivial in the grand scheme or comparison to the vast universe
So we create meaning.
We tell ourselves our actions matter. That our love matters. That some fate or alignment has brought us to where we are. That our lives belong to something larger than the brief interval between being born and disappearing.
Maybe that is a delusion.
Maybe nihilism is closer to the truth then any optimistic philosophy
But nihilism has never led any one to contentedness or joy 
So go on believing the stars are looking down on you.
Go on believing that some celestial being chose you, if that is what allows you to keep looking upward.
Maybe it isn’t real.
But the feeling is.
The awe is real.
 The love is real.
 The comfort is real.
And perhaps that is enough.
Because you do not need to be chosen by the universe to have significance.
You do not need a divine hand reaching down to justify your existence.
You are here.
You are alive.
For this brief, impossible moment, you exist beneath the same stars that have watched everything else disappear.
And maybe that is enough.
Maybe it has always been enough
to simply be.