Look Upon the Moon and Stars
How I wish I could show you...
Little one,
How I wish I could show you the moon and the stars.
Life is an interesting thing. It is the longest experience we will ever have, and yet, it is also shorter than we often realize. Even alicorn immortality seems temporary when I am faced with all that there ever has been, and all that there will ever be. When you gaze upon the past and the future, you see everything in a grand scope that somehow leads back to you--everything that has happened before has led to you being where you are today, and everything you do today will shape your tomorrow, and every tomorrow there will ever be.
It is simple, easy to see the wrong in it all. To see the inky blackness of the past, and to see the uncertainty in the future. There is a vast expanse of wrongdoing in all history, both that we have committed ourselves, and that has been committed against us. That our ancestors have perpetrated, and that has been perpetrated against our ancestors. We can look for miles upon miles all around us and see everything that is wrong, all that is bleak, and the totality of the sins of everyone in everything.
Sometimes we cause the wrong. I once attempted to bring eternal night upon the entire world, simply because of my jealousy that I was not adored as my sister Celestia was. Sometimes, the wrong is done to us. I have been scorned and shamed and made to look the fool many thousands of times for actions that were not mine, both before my banishment, and after.
It is like space. It is quite easy and quite simple to look upon the void. To get lost in it, and to see nothing else. To stare into its infinite darkness and see no light, and to think that it sucks up every last ray of sunshine, every last passing speck of brightness that we think we ever will experience. It is uncomplicated to look into the grand scheme of all there is in space, and tell yourself that there is no purpose looking for anything else but the dark around you.
But the dark is not all there is.
Some nights, it is difficult to see anything. For when you look up at the night sky, sometimes, you will not even see the moon. It is easy to think in these times that all has left you, that everything good has departed and will never return. Yet, when you look up into the sky the very next few nights, you will see a sliver of light, where once there was nothing.
You see, little one, even in times where all the good seems to have exited, when all joy and all happiness seems to have vanished once and for all only to leave you in perpetual darkness for the rest of your time in this life, you must realize that it is only a New Moon. For even when the moon has vanished from the sky above, it is still there, waiting to shine light upon the land below once again.
Even when the sky is dark, even when the land is black as the void, know that there are stars that exist all around the sky above. There are times you cannot see them, but that does not mean that they are not present. They all look down upon you with hope in their stares and smiles upon their faces. For the stars are not only large spheres of perpetual fire, but they are everything good that has ever been done, and the good that is being done all around you.
Sometimes, it is hard to see the good in the world for the same reason it is difficult to see the stars above. We cannot see the stars when there is too much artificial, background light all amongst our streets and cities. Similarly, it is hard to see the good when you are surrounded by all that pretends to be so, but is only artificial and distant in the end. When you remove all of it, however, chance a gaze into the void once again, and see that it is no longer as empty as it once did seem. See that it is filled with stars, with planets, and on the right nights, with the moon shining brightly upon you, smiling down on your form from many thousands of miles away.
For when you look at the grand scope of space, you will see that although there are many thousands of miles, sometimes even many thousands of years between the sources of light, they are still there. And when you look upon all of it at once, you no longer see only the void, but the many millions of lights there are within it.
So too, are there many millions of acts of good all throughout the past, present, and future.
Not everything is dark forever. Even when the skies are cloudy, the moon and sun still shine upon the land. Even when the skies are dark, the stars are still there to smile upon you. Even when the moon is absent, it is there all the same, preparing to give its light once again.
The past is not the sum total of all sins that have ever been perpetrated by or against us, and the future is not the black hole of misery that we make it out to be. Because just as the sun, moon, and stars have existed throughout the veins of history, and just as they exist now, so too has joy existed throughout our lives, and so too does it exist now.
And so too, will all of it exist and continue to shine down upon us in the future.
Know, little one, that the stars are out there. That the moon is there for you. And that joy has not departed from your life. It is simply waiting for you to find it again.
Little one...
How I wish I could show you the moon and the stars.
