Much Obliged Star...

Listening to: Sigur Rós - Hoppípolla

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode."
-Lawrence M. Kruass

It's difficult for me to wrap my mind around that. Not because I don't believe it, but because it seems so foreign. Reminding myself our Sun is a star is a daily routine, simply because its brethren are the most meaningless of specks in the nighttime sky (Meaningless, in their effect on our day to day existence, not towards the Universe as a whole. I must say, their affect is great) and it could not be more meaningful. I will never feel another star's warmth or its blinding light. The light I see from them is, at the very least, over 4 years old and likely much greater. For all I know, the star I look at now, has long since died. It's like looking at the pages of a history book. I will never know that time or that place, all I can do is imagine what it would be like be sitting at the feet of the our greatest philosophers and breathing in their skepticism of the status quo. Yet, these distant cousins are what created me. Without them we are all dark matter, aimlessly existing in the great expanse of space. Billions of years ago a star exploded, likely only a few interstellar blocks away. A small portion of the elements left behind, after years and years of being recycled and recycled, would come to form the random concoction that is me. I hope I do not disappoint star.