The stars are burning spheroids of hydrogen and helium, almost all so far away that the distance can only be expressed in terms of how many years the fastest-moving thing known to man takes to travel from there to here; and it takes millions or billions of years for that light to reach us here on Earth. Obviously, that means they could all have burned out already and most, if not all, of us, would likely never be the wiser; it would, after all, take billions of years for us to notice that even one of those tiny little pinpricks has winked out for good.

But if they were gone, how many of us would even notice? We live in a society riddled with night-lights--streetlamps, skyscrapers, headlights, indoor fixtures, halogen torches...more often than not, it's impossible to even see the stars without driving out to the middle of nowhere solely for the purpose of looking at them. And, of those who did notice their absence, how many people would actually care? The vast majority of people here in the western world no longer use them for anything. Sailors have their GPS systems, astrologers just make things up as they go along, and most of the major religions revolve around what's written in ancient tomes, not by the occurrences and interpretations of celestial phenomena. In the modern era, he stars are largely seen as nothing more than a decoration to be enjoyed or ignored at one's leisure. And the trend seems to be leaning more and more heavily toward ignoring them. It was not at all unusual, many years ago, to buy one's child a telescope and encourage him to take a look at distant features of the universe. These days...well--how many of you even had a telescope when you were children? I didn't. I had a microscope.

The stars are just one victim, though, of our seemingly inborn tendency to take our surroundings for granted. I've lived in Pennsylvania all my life, and, while I do sometimes glance about during my morning walks and appreciate the aesthetic behind the architecture lining the streets I walk down, I've never really felt that it jumped out at me. I had to look for the beauty in the bricks, and I only seemed to bother doing that when I'd nothing else to do. It wasn't until my fiancee's bus was pulling into town that I came to understand this phenomenon, though; as she rode inside, looking out the windows, she sent me a simple text message: "The houses here are so pretty." I paused, blinked, and found myself looking around at them, only able to conclude she was absolutely right.

Of course, this trait is, to some degree, necessary; we are, after all, social creatures, and being such means that we've a fair share of errands to run. It is very difficult to finish all of our daily tasks in a timely fashion if we stop to enjoy every pretty little thing we happen across. But, like many of our other instincts, this one is in far too great supply, to the point where merely contemplating things of beauty has fallen out of favor as a hobby, replaced by video games, the internet, and television. Many of us have become news junkies, which is perhaps the worst thing--rather than spending our free time enjoying things for their aesthetic value, we choose to fill ourselves with fear of the world around us and anger at injustices too far away for us to make a difference.

For fear of losing your interest, I'll get to the point. I'm not advocating some sort of hippy-dippy pseudo-spiritual mentality; there is certainly ugliness in the world, and to pretend everything is wonderful and good is insulting to the things that truly are. Nor am I proposing we all make some foolhardy mass-hysterical "return to nature"; I know how those end, and, quite frankly, there's a very good reason that we isolated ourselves from "nature". So what am I advocating?

Some cool, clear night in the near future, I want you to take your car, drive out to the countryside, turn all the lights off, lie on the roof, and just take a good look at the stars. Today, if at all possible, I want you to go outside, head to a nice part of town, and just take a leisurely stroll, enjoying the buildings. The evening news can wait.