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The night around me is clear and dark, with only a halfmoon attended by a bare smattering of stars, just enough to claim this city has a night sky. The houses I pass are dark, houselights standing in for our missing astral guides, and few neighbors are around despite the gift of lessened heat in an otherwise broiling summer. It’s almost peaceful out. Nights like these are the feeling of limitlessness wrapped in a bubble of mortal instructions. Biological constraints like how long my feet will carry me before the adrenalic euphoria catches up with how long it’s been. Time restrains in how long I can be gone before I’m assumed kidnapped or delinquent. Ironic realizations such as how something as elemental as starlight can be drowned out by a force as young and newfangled as electricity.
Littering the world around, bright fluorescent balls of discernible electromagnetic radiation are everywhere, from streetlamps and flashing headlights to the reflected glare of household televisions. Each bulb or pixel is only a slight addition in the grand scheme of things, but with the combined light matter of the city's near-million denizens, the wavelengths radiated off household artifacts spreads to a noticeable glow across the horizon.
Having lived in a city my whole life, this haze of light isn’t inherently noticeable outside of small exceptions: sudden small moments, such as waking up at three AM and wondering why the ‘night sky’ appears nearly dusky gray, or sharp contrasts like returning from a summer mountain camping trip to gawk at how empty and barren our sky seems after Coloradan ones teeming with specks of light. In fact, proving the power of this phenomena - or ‘light pollution’ as it is commonly known -, even camping on the opposite side of a mountain range from a roughly same-sized city there was a distinct bright haze to an edge of the horizon. But of course, the stars only disappear visually with no real trouble, certainly nothing like the ignored giantess of climate change next door.
Yet these little lanterns, glowing like faery lights, serve as a reminder to our all-too-human aspirations. Just as the elemental light of stars can be drowned out by the little innovations of humankind, so can each person’s own goals, ideals, even firmly held beliefs, be shaken or drowned out in the flood of similar concepts of equal importance to those surrounding us. If stars are a reminder of our indistinct but defining aspirations, what happens when the light haze of others hits us as well? Do we gradually become the observatory worker, realizing our dark zone has become encroached upon by the brilliant glow of the industry surrounding us? Similar to the stars’ purposeful shining, the personal guiding principles of human life are not quite quantifiable until they begin to disappear and leave the measure of their absence behind them.
There is a constant tug-of-war to find the mid-distance between respecting and supporting the hopes and morals of others without necessarily becoming lost in them ourselves. Between not allowing ourselves to remain static, and ensuring we do not allow the pitfalls of communal life to overtake us. It will a challenge individually undertaken for the rest of our lives, but one we are all aiming to complete, even if it is alone.