Save the Stars

Scientists think our incomprehensibly massive universe is just a bubble in an even larger universe that is infinite in size.

It boggles the mind—yet in a way is relatable to me. I’m in a damn bubble of work right now, processing PPP loans with what feels like galaxies of responsibilities and worlds’ worth of people depending on me. (Literary license. Roll with it.) I know there’s more out there, creatures and creation, light and lightness, that I’m unaware of and can’t touch. At least that’s what I’m going through at the moment, working fifty-one days in a row (and counting) yet still unable to break from what feels like the black hole that is the relief program.

If our universe—everything we can see that’s been created over billions of years—is just a bubble, there may not be extraterrestrial life that we will find. God or Buddha or the gods of Olympus may have created all of this just for us. Yet we’re blowing it.

Me, I’m trying to help small businesses but am unsure of the rules, the regs, made up on the fly by government agencies or not at all—yet my judgement will be scrutinized years from now. I’ll make the same argument the government is currently making: this is all new, unplanned and unprecedented. Yet they hold the keys in the end. I’m just trying to do my best.

I can’t say the same for mankind.

We saw the clues about the coronavirus, wrote manuals and protocols and even fictional stories like Contagion about possible pandemics—and had the tools to stop it. For those who think this is a judgment by God/Buddha/Whoever, that higher power gave us the ability to report, gauge, track, and respond. We could’ve done better, responded faster. Many may claim we didn’t know it would be this bad. I think we just forgot that the best fiction is based in fact.

It’s not the end of us. Far from it. But we will be remembered during this time like the Spanish Flu era.

Yet who cares how history will look at this time period? We’ll be old or dead by then. The big thing is how we move forward. When this is over and we emerge from our homes, we’ll have the opportunity to appreciate each other, marvel in our differences instead of rankle against them. The virus doesn’t give a damn about your gender, color, pocketbook—and neither should any of us.

We are mighty. We shake the earth. Yet we can be decimated not by a microscopic bug but by our willful ignorance and denial. I fear for my parents and parents’ in law, as well as my aunts and uncle. Friends and coworkers. My bubble reverberates with the sounds and demands of my day job—but my loved ones are the stars that light my universe.

Let’s be smart. See this through to the end, the right way, the smart way, so the stars in our skies don’t go out before their time.