What Makes People Ungrateful

This is going to be my first actually philosophical post (I am good at these, okay, don't worry) and I've been meaning to get this across for a while now.

When I lived in New York City, I always thought of the stars and planets and everything beyond the elevation at which planes reach, as fairy tales. But the kind of fairy tale that only exists in science books. Anyway, my point is that New York is the city that never sleeps, and that phrase is not the least bit exaggerated. I'm serious when I say that everything is open 24 hours a day. Nothing closes, nothing stops, traffic is always moving, people are always awake. Therefore, lights never turn off in the city. The sky is so bright at night that the moon is barely a speck and the moonlight is just something in romantic stories or on the north pole. I never saw more than three stars in my entire childhood living in Brooklyn.

When I moved to Jordan, everything changed, even the sky. I would look up at the sky during the daytime and I could never so much as find a water droplet, let alone a cloud. At night, the stars are so bright and beautiful and abundant that they look like freckles on someone's face. But more majestic. They seem like impossible miracles. Something sacred and untouchable, forever perfect and untainted by humans.

When I first moved here, people used to ask me to explain the differences between America and Jordan, and I used to respond with, "Everything."

"Everything? That can't be possible. Something's gotta be the same."

"Nope. Even the sky looks different to me."

Sure, I felt like I was on a different planet completely but lately I've been looking up at the stars and finding the constellations with ease. I did research and now I'm able to tell the difference between a star and Jupiter. Or Jupiter and one of it's many moons. I'm finding out that each star has a name and a place in the whole making of everything. That outer space is not just fairy tale stuff. It's real and it's there, even if you can't see it, it will always be there.

It just amazes me to think that the earth is forever rotating and the planets are forever orbiting the sun and if you look up at the night sky tonight, the stars will almost never be in that exact same position with the planets ever again. I like to think that it's an ever changing story. That the next time the planets align this exact way again is in millions of years. I like to think that I'm very very small and irrelevant in the great scheme of things. It's a comforting idea; the idea that none of my problems mean anything when you look at the big picture. I am simply a fraction of a fraction of the people on this earth. The earth itself is a fraction of a fraction of endless expanding space. It's a thought that comforts me and helps me relax, forget my problems and not worry about things. I feel carefree when I look up at the stars and find where they fit in and read the stories that the constellations tell. Age old stories that can't be contaminated by humans (for now at least).