The Forgotten Storytellers
If there’s one thing that can calm you faster than anything — it’s simply staring up at the night sky.
Also known as stargazing or moongazing, some of the benefits of this practice are:
- It can spark your creativity
- It’s a stress reliever.
There are many more, of course, but in my opinion, these two are the most crucial for us writers. It’s ordinary for us to get frustrated over our manuscripts, writing schedules and creativity blocks. This stress can lead to feelings of failure and sometimes, even depression — for not being able to attend to what is, technically, a part of you does lead to depression.
Simply laying on your back in the grass and staring at the various constellations can be a great stress reliever. Plugging in your earphones and listening to music while stargazing helps, too.
I’ve also noticed that often, the elements of the cosmos can be the greatest storytellers and poets. They inspire, guide and motivate if we pay enough attention to them.
Let us take the comets, for instance. The shooting stars we wish upon. They turn to dust just before touching the (Earth’s) ground. Each person will learn a different lesson from this, according to their life’s circumstances and unique perspective. The lesson I have learnt from this is that no matter how different we are according to our race, gender, skin colour and personality, at one point of time, we all meet our end as one.
Each “shooting star” has a more or less different shape and unless they’re large enough to be a meteorite, they meet the end to their magnificent lives in pretty much the same way — by turning into dust.
The lesson learned from this could be, and is different according to the person in question — but there is one thing that connects the entirety of this: the fact that our individual lessons are taught by the cosmos. The universe. The stars, the moon, the planets, the comets, the asteroids, the natural satellites.
The forgotten storytellers.
We often look for new books, new stories, new poetry in all the wrong places. We then expect them to drown out the noisiness of life in unrealistic ways. This does work, but only to a certain extent. I am not saying this is the only way, since everybody’s perspective differs and what works for someone else may not work for you — but I think the noisiness of life can be transmuted into peace, if only we are willing to listen.
I have taken up a new hobby since a few weeks ago — researching about physics, or more specifically, quantum physics. I’ve read that energy can be transmuted and not “destroyed” or “created”.
So instead of trying to “destroy” the noise of life in vain, which will only waste your time and energy, we can transmute this hubbub into our personal haven of peace.
Stargazing teaches us how to do this.
You see, when we are engrossed in (doing) something that gives us a pleasant feeling (e.g. a feeling of thrill, security, peace, etc.), anything seldom disturbs us.
For example, when I was trying to figure out whether that one star belonged to Sculptor or Phoenix, the frequent honking of cars and chirping of the crickets hardly bothered me. I accepted all the noise and bother as part of my ambience, which strangely made me feel more grounded.
It was only when the satisfaction of realizing that the star belonged to Sculptor filled my heart that I realized I had been able to transmute the annoying energy of the city into a relaxing background noise, whose value was now practically nothing.
This practice can be used even while writing, and the racket that once bothered you is now just part of the background ambience, not daring to come into the foreground.
It’s these seemingly insignificant and unconscious ways by which you can convert “negative” energy (i.e. energy that bothers you and therefore lowers your vibration) into “positive” energy (i.e. energy that has a pleasant impact on you and therefore lifts your vibration), instead of trying to “destroy” the negative energy in vain.
Once again, the storyteller is the star — a storyteller of the Universe.
These little lessons that you can learn, narrated subtly by the storytellers of the Universe, can have a profound impact on not only your craft, but on your daily life as well.
The poetry created by the stars is a different kind of poetry altogether. A kind of poetry that can seldom be written, but one that is often realized at the depths of the Mind: available only to one who listens.
Thank you so much for reading this post! Share this article if you want to spread more awareness about the overlooked storytellers of the Universe.
Also, here’s a little question for you, dear reader, before you skip to another tab:
