More Than Stars: The Hope I Saw In Our World’s Endless Night
Artwork by me. I designed all the artwork on this website, except in the group projects, in which I specify which role I played in the talented groups I have worked with.
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Extraordinary.
It’s 3 AM in Greece. Applause and rejoice after our last ever client presentations at Columbia University. We say our congratulations and I end the video chat when all is said and done. Everyone and everything disappears with the clap of the screen.
Silence.
The loved ones I am staying with went to bed hours ago. The quiet is a void that is normally full of beautiful sounds. Outside my window, I see Athens. A vibrant 24-hour city with a heartbeat flattened by the pandemic and a second national lockdown. In Greece and around the world we seem to be moving perpetually in place, like hamsters on a wheel.
Last year at the end of the term, snow fell poetically as though on cue as we walked out through the courtyards and the famous plaza. But this year there will be no grand mahogany walls, no buzz from the business library, none of the electric energy that crackles with every footstep in Butler library. None of the quirks, like that strange prehistoric ape skeleton I encountered one day when I was stressing out about finals in a life science building that looked at me as if to say, hey buddy, I got wiped out by the Ice Age, no, go ahead, tell me about your problems…
But this year I will have none of the glow of the downtown lights. None of the jazz, but most importantly, none of the exceptional people I have met. I had a plan—we all did—but it flipped like a switch, (with no opt-out button!) from in-person to remote. From together to apart, from somewhere to anywhere, from certain to fluid, from handshakes to hand sanitizers, from “congratulations!” to “we regret to inform you.” Three mentors I admired in work and life since my early years at ACS Athens, are no longer with us. My dreams became plans that I chased, only to shrink back into dreams. I decided to make myself useful, sharing what I have learned about working from home. I began taking up old hobbies again, like drawing (I made the cover art for this post, and most other art on this website). But what now?
As I looked out that window, the starlight caught my attention like a tap on the shoulder; what I saw was more than stars. I saw in them the people who gave me a chance when others would not, the loved ones who gave me a place to stay, and, more importantly, love, during lockdown. Like a movie projection, I saw a picture across the sky of the small things; the home-cooked meals, the games, the smiles, the celebrations, the whispers of reassurance from my mentors supervising from above, and the big picture; life, love, and the medical workers who fight the invisible war every day. In one insightful class I took last year, we learned these are known as the bright spots.
Astronomy tells us that the starlight we see traveled a long way to reach us; so far, in fact that the stars they came from probably died long before their light ever reached us, but, what I see out there is a light so bright, and a hope so strong, it crossed the universe just to show us what hope can do. That is what gets me through our endless night.
And, for me, my friends, that is
Extraordinary.
Happy, healthy Holidays from me to you!