Why am I drawn to the stars? (Top Reasons)
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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
In this article, we are going to answer the following question: Why am I drawn to the stars? We will explain, from the point of view of scientists, musicians, writers and spiritual guides – why we are so drawn to the stars, the Moon and the sky.
Why am I drawn to the stars, the Moon and the sky?
The first drawing of the Moon – a map drawn in chalk on a rock – was made 5,000 years ago in Ireland. From that moment of Prehistory until today, human beings continue to observe the Moon and the stars to paint them, study them or just contemplate them.
Stephen Hawking said “Always remember to look at the stars and not at your feet. Try to make sense of what they see, and ask yourself what it is that makes the Universe exist. ”
To focus our attention only on earthly matters – believes the English physicist – would be to limit the human spirit. It is true. In heaven, people have found logical answers and designed non-intellectual intuitions. “I always look at the sky and here I am” answered the Japanese Jiroemon Kimura – 116 years old – every time they asked him why he had lived so long.
Looking at the sky is still an intimate moment in which we look for answers.
Still, many people are unaware of the reasons for why they are so attracted to the moon?
From the earliest civilizations, stargazing has had a utilitarian function. In Mesopotamia, they found a way to manage their agriculture. In Babylon, they identified and plotted the movements of the planets on maps.
Our ancestors looked to heaven to worship their gods, and although we do not bow down to those deities, we still find up their questions much bigger than ourselves. Every time a human being has raised her head, she has said or done fascinating things.
When the monk Giordano Bruno did it, at the end of the fourteenth century, he had a revelation: the Sun, he said, was simply one star, among millions, around which other planets like Earth revolved, and that the Universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds: it contradicted the Copernican model that dominated social belief, imposed by an inquisitive Church.
A few years later, in 1609, Galileo Galilei observed the Moon for the first time through the telescope he built. It is not smooth, he said, it has cratered. Two centuries later, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi named those holes that continue to intrigue us.
Their ideas changed the way we understand the cosmos, what would become of humanity if Bruno, Galilei, Riccioli or Grimaldi had preferred to see their feet and not the stars?
Without our suspecting it, the depth of the universe that appears from our sidereal window has helped us to reduce our egocentrism. The cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead, said in an interview in 1970 for El Correo, the Unesco magazine, that since human beings considered the possibility of living somewhere other than this planet, man’s position in the universe.
“Everything changes, indeed, and this involves a considerable reduction in the arrogance of man and a tremendous magnification of the species.” The immensity and complexity of space move us and makes us feel tiny: the eye can only see six thousand stars (and there are, in the Milky Way alone, about four hundred billion).
The vast majority are a thousand light-years from the Sun, unreachable for our vision. Still, how little our limited senses allow us to see fascinates us.
Fifty-one years have passed since Neil Armstrong arrived on the Moon, but the historical scenes of his moon landing still overwhelm us.
Madmen, the excellent television series on the issues of New York advertisers, creates a true portrait of that July 20, 1969: entire families sitting in front of a television, excited by Armstrong’s first steps. One of the main characters dies, perhaps due to the great emotion, he felt when seeing them. It is a beautiful literary metaphor for a moment in the series that, like the journey of Apollo 11, is — at the same time — the end and beginning of epochs.
Never before have we human beings been able to look down and meet the imposing Moon. It seemed like a triumph for the species, at a time when the nuclear crisis painted a gloomy future. It was an achievement that surely even a Russian celebrated.
Not all of us who see the Moon come to extraordinary conclusions. Perhaps because we see it “with a turkey face and thinking about something else” as Hernán Cassiari said. In one of the columns that he published in the Orsai magazine, Cassiari tells how Dennis Hope – a failed ventriloquist – while looking at it “as stupid, as we did when we reached the bottom of the well and we no longer know what to do with our lives“
He had the best idea of his life: patent the Moon to make it developable. Hope, who until that day had had a miserable life, proposed what no one had previously suggested. He became the famous man and millionaire that he is today. In no other person has the Moon had such a direct effect: all because he found something different in it.
The Moon and the sky also give us more personal answers. In “When things fall apart”, Pema Chödron – an American Buddhist nun – recounts that when she was young, she saw her boyfriend hugging another girl.
Filled with fury, she wanted to throw some object at him, but all the ones nearby were at least a thousand dollars. She ran into the courtyard, looked at the starry sky, wept with rage, and immediately laughed at herself. The clear sky helped her recognize the emotions that had led her, in an instant, to deep suffering. What she experienced is the smallness and insignificance of our life against the vastness of the universe, as Margaret Mead said.
For Gabriel García Márquez, the arrival of man on the Moon caused him admiration for science and also gratitude for the Earth.
“The scientific utility of these discoveries is incalculable, but one thing is clear: there is nobody there. It’s a massive 25 billion square kilometre glacial night where there are oceans of liquid nitrogen, winds ten times more devastating than Sumatra’s typhoons, and apocalyptic storms that can last up to 30,000 years, but there is not a single flower.”
Looking at the sky helps us to change the perspective of things, and, in some way, to be happier.
Although the Moon and the stars are up there, distant and unreachable, we feel a deep connection with them. Cosmologist and astronomer Carl Sagan said that a part of us knows that we come from the Cosmos: “We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us, we are made of stellar matter. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. ”
His words reveal that five thousand more years may pass and we will continue to look up at the sky, although by then, it may be another sky that we observe from another possible world.
FAQ on Why am I drawn to the stars?
Why do I feel so connected to the stars?
You feel connected to the star because, since prehistoric times, we humans used the stars to guide us. For example, in Mesopotamia, they found a way to manage their agriculture. In Babylon, they identified and plotted the movements of the planets on maps.
Are stars really star-shaped?
No, stars are not really star-shaped, this is how our eyes perceive them, however. In reality, stars have a spherical form.
What do you feel when you look up at the stars?
When you look up at the stars you may feel a little bit uneasy, tiny, like your problems and worries are not so relevant all of the sudden.
What do you call a person who loves skies?
A person who loves the sky is called an Astrophile. They are passionate about the star, galaxies and everything about astronomy.
Why do I cry when I look at the stars?
You cry when you look at the stars perhaps because it reminds you of how infinite the universe is. It makes you realize that all our problems here on Earth are pretty insignificant, compared to the stars. It makes you grateful for the fact of being alive.
Why do stars look so small?
Stars look small because they are very far away from our solar system. The sun is the closest star to planet Earth.
Further reading
Collins Stargazing: Beginners guide to astronomy (Royal Observatory Greenwich), by Royal Observatory Greenwich
The Astronomy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained, by DK
The Art of Urban Astronomy: A Guide to Stargazing Wherever You Are, by Abigail Beall
StarFinder for Beginners Flexibound, by Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Astronomy For Dummies, 4th Edition, by Maran (
The Sky Atlas: The Greatest Maps, Myths and Discoveries of the Universe, by Edward Brooke-Hitching
References
BBC News – Prehistoric Moon map unearthed
Vice.com -Dennis M. Hope Has Owned the Moon Since 1980 Because He Says So
Sciencefocus.com -Why are some stars magnetically attracted?
