Once upon a warm night last summer, the sky put on a show to lull me to sleep. As I lay out in the damp grass, streaks of light danced across the already star-splattered tapestry above me and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. As I was watching the tails of burning lights paint the sky, I felt a sense of hope. I didn’t feel like a number or a grade. I was not just one bad day after another. No, I was part of something bigger than all of that, and for some reason the thought didn’t scare me. Instead of feeling dwarfed as I tried to contemplate the sheer size of the cosmos around me, I felt strangely at peace.

In a world that seems to demand no less than perfection, I often have a hard time just being happy. So, when I do get the chance, I try my best to figure out what in that moment I’m doing right. That night, as I was trying to figure out how to keep this feeling of serenity, I remembered that I once heard that the universe is expanding at approximately 74 kilometres per second. That means that around us, everything is rushing apart, and there is nothing more important to remember than the fact that no one, not a single person on this planet, can fight six sexdecillion, five hundred ten quindecillion kilograms of matter expanding uncontrollably. That night sky was a reminder that there is so much in life that is not up to me. All I can do is my best; I can only try. As for the outcome? I have as much control over that as a shooting star has over where it’s going to land.

So the next morning, when I woke up in the grass with a brighter sky above me, I began to think. I knew summer would soon be over, and I would be trapped not only in the cold of winter but in the stress and angst of another school year. Without a reminder, that fleeting moment of peace I had felt the night before would soon be eclipsed by everyday life. If only there were a way to … well, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to bring the stars home with me. Four old bedsheets, three gallons of paint, two step stools and one week later, my once-white ceiling was a deep blue, spangled with the carefully-painted stars of all the constellations of the northern hemisphere. Gemini. Pegasus. Orion. Cancer. Draco. Leo. Cassiopeia. Even as I lay in my own bed, a reminder of the universe that hovered above me.

And above me it remains to this day. In everything I do, my stars are there to light the way. Though the static sky that clings to the ceiling of my room is no more than a human idea, it is enough. It is enough to humble me and it is enough because all of it—the paint, the room, and me—is made of elements that once made up the stars and yet, against all odds, here we are. Even when I feel like I’m spiraling hopelessly through space, I remember that, if that’s truly the case, then I’m spilling my dreams across an infinitely beautiful tapestry. When, even despite my bones which I’ve been told are pound-for-pound stronger than concrete, I’m reminded that my heart can crack and break and bleed, my stars remind me that I am just a small piece of an ever changing universe. They remind me that sometimes things burn up, and sometimes things fall apart, but to not be afraid. Chaos and destruction are no more than moments in this beautiful, ever-changing universe. In the end, that’s all they are. Just moments in time, as fleeting as shooting stars.