A SHOOTING STAR—WAS IT MEANT FOR ME?

The other night I took a break from the seemingly endless task of editing my novel and sat out on the deck for a few minutes. The moment I sat back to relax, I saw a shooting star in the sky over my right shoulder.

Amazing, I thought—was it meant for me? Was it a sign? A good omen?

Whatever might have been its meaning, it made me feel good. What a strange thing, I thought, that a natural event like that has the power to change the way I feel. It is probably because we have instilled in events like shooting stars and solar eclipses, mythic meanings. Perhaps, in some cases, I would suppose we do this because the event in the sky might have happened concurrently with some other natural event on earth.

We are always looking for meaning in our lives. Maybe, especially at times when our lives seem in flux and in need of more meaning, we impregnate an event like this one with undo importance.

But even as I write "undo importance" I think, why should I be so cynical? Why not just accept the initial feeling I had when I felt the shooting star uplift me. That is the truth—it did. When I saw it, it made me feel good.

Let’s just leave it at that; and avoid my tendency to think things to death. Whether I attach a meaning to something so simple or not, is not the point. The shooting star—any shooting star—is beautiful in its own right. It might inspire a poem or a painting. And it certainly, in me, inspires some pondering of bigger things.

"Was it meant for me?" Sure.

"My Shooting Star" –a poem

Was it God drawing a line
With a pencil of light,
To show me how a slice of time,
quickly comes and quickly goes?

Or was the meaning something else,
even more profound?
Or was there nothing meant at all?