Kaylie Johnson

To live even a second on the Earth is to know ourselves as the children of the stars, as Carl Sagan would say. Be it the perception of light from the sun or as it reflects off the moon, heat on the tops of our heads, or the cool tides as they rise to our toes and fall back again; our lives were born from the stuff burning in the cosmos—the stars. Each star burns uniquely but with known intensity. Some burn big, bright, and fast. Others small and slow. Humans have calculated and tracked these patterns of our parental bodies.

That being said, we may have been born from the stars, but we are not them. Our lifespans are not pre-measured for us by astronomers who tell us how brightly we shine and how fast we burn out. All of us can use what we own of ourselves to shine upon each other and pull the good into our orbits. This is why we gather to share our worlds and take the time to imagine the perspectives that we have not lived—humans want to know as much of the world as we can before we recycle ourselves back to the stars. Literature, art, science, gardening, beekeeping, and dreaming are just some ways we listen to each other and listen to those who have passed. It is a privilege to be here to listen to voices other than my own. 

Walt Whitman speaks of death in a section from his poem “Song of Myself,” where he writes:

What do you think has become of the young and old men? 
And what do you think has become of the women and children? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, 
And ceased the moment life appeared. 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, 
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

This is not unlike when Carl Sagan uttered his famous quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” But Whitman makes the claim that we are lucky to die. Lucky to die. And I know it doesn’t feel like that. It does not feel lucky to know death and know you must meet it, but it is comfortingly true that “there is really no death,” and that what you are made of, what we are all made of, is an immense source of power that keeps the universe churning and producing. What we have within us can create everything we can love, and that is not a metaphor. Where there is death, there is life. The power of us and our loved ones lives on forever out there in the cosmos and on Earth. The blade of grass is as much Walt Whitman as it is Carl Sagan, as it is me, as it is you.

Before we meet death, we must first meet life—that confusing thing that we can’t all seem to agree on. But I think there are parts we can agree on. We must be kind, genuine, and forgiving to each other and to ourselves. We must learn from the past and push towards a future from which we will be sad to depart, but proud to leave for our children. We must take the time, like today, to consider and really listen to the other stars in our sky, because there is no limit to how much we can learn. And finally, we must remember those who came before us, showed us where to start, and taught us that the only limit is the one we set for ourselves. Like oars, we are dipped into the water for a short time, and in that time, we propel the boat forward.

It is lucky to be the stars and the earth at the same time, and lucky that we get to share ourselves with each other. Beyond death, there is only more life, and that is something to shine brightly for.

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