Thanks a lot, NASA

I hate the photos NASA released from the James Webb telescope, and here’s why: When I was 12, I fell in love at first sight.  

I was in the Owen J. Roberts Middle School auditorium watching that year’s school play, Tom Sawyer. I remember seeing the kid who played Huck Finn bursting onto the stage, full of energy and motion. And I gasped with recognition, even though I had never seen him before. There he is. I found him. My future came momentarily into focus. I love him. He is important to me. I’m going to know him my whole life and I’m going to marry him.  

Sure, there were obstacles. For example, we had never met. Plus, I was in seventh grade, and he was in eighth grade, which meant he would be in high school next year, making it even harder for us to meet.  I remember thinking that was frustrating, but okay. I could be patient.  

The next time I saw him, I was in ninth grade and he was in tenth. I introduced myself as soon as I could. “I’m Matt,” he said. I know exactly who you are, I didn’t say.  

We were friends all through high school. I loved him. He loved someone else the entire time. It’s okay, I thought. I know who you are and I know how this story ends. I can be patient.  

He left for Penn State. I dated other people. But mostly I waited. I went to Penn State the next year. I got myself assigned to the girls’ floor of the very same dorm he was in.  

One night he took me into one of the study lounges in that dorm. Alone. Just him and me. My heart started to pound. I leaned against the desk and wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans. “I wanted to talk to you alone,” he said.  

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod 

“I feel like I’ve been picking up certain signals from you...” 

Yes? Really? I tried to smile at him as coyly as I could. 

“...And I just wanted to say that I love you as a friend, but I’m really not interested in having a romantic relationship with you.” 

What.  

I don’t remember what I did then, but I do remember that he said, “Are you okay?” 

And I'm not proud of this, but, that’s when I said something to the effect of:  

“Yeah. I mean. I’m just shocked. I don’t know why you think you're seeing signals because I’m definitely not sending any signals. I definitely don’t want anything romantic either I can’t believe you thought that I’ve never even thought that never crossed my mind. I barely even like you at all. I don’t have any idea what you are talking about. It’s hilarious actually that you would think that. I have to go now.” 

And then, since unrequited love hadn’t killed me, I tried to die of embarrassment. I had designed my life around a feeling I had when I was 12 that, in retrospect, was probably just hormones. I felt so stupid. I had made actual decisions based on a solid belief in an inevitable love that reveals itself to 12-year-old girls, but, irritatingly, not to their predestined partners.  

I survived my embarrassment, and after a while, I recovered from my all-encompassing crush, graduated, moved out of state, loved, lost, and got a job.  

Nine years after that horrifying study lounge conversation, I married him.  

Like I always knew I would. 

When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you. Friedrich Nietzsche

So, here’s the thing—If you think there’s even a slight chance that maybe the universe had a role in bringing you and your spouse together, don’t look at actual photographs of the actual universe. Especially super-clear ones like those NASA released from the James Webb telescope. 

I want to see a universe run by love and cosmic connections. Where people matter. A universe that brings us together so that we can create more love and connections. I want to be a part of creation—created and creating for good. I don’t know what I thought that looked like, but it wasn’t the swirling, burning gas and rock in the unfeeling vastness that I saw in those photos. And when I looked into the abyss, I started to lose myself. I couldn't hold on to beliefs that are fundamental to me: I have a purpose. My work has meaning. People come into your life for a reason. We were meant to be. When I stared into the void, my stories stopped making sense, even to me.  

And if the void really does stare back, what is it seeing? This universe in the photos—not only doesn’t it care about me, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s just physics doing its chaotic dance without us. It mocks the sense of destiny of one person on one planet on one galaxy dwarfed by the unending darkness of space. So what if any two people fall in love and entwine their lives? So what if we destroy each other and our planet? What could any of it mean to a universe rich with so much time and space?  

I complain to my husband. He looks at me, bemused. “I’m not sure why you’re mad at NASA. It's not NASA's fault that looking at those pictures makes you feel small.” (PSA: This is the kind of helpful advice you might get if you choose your spouse when you are 12.) 

It doesn't matter, I tell him. Nothing at all matters.  

Except.  

He matters. Our kids matter. If I look away from the photos that have me so unmoored, I see so many people in my life who matter that I wonder why I turned to space for meaning in the first place.  

I turn my attention back to Earth—I get literally and figuratively grounded again—and I wonder. Maybe it’s okay that I don’t see meaning out there. This planet may not be all there is, but it is all we have. And what is here is important to me.  

This is where we had the incredible good luck to find ourselves alive and able to love and care for each other in this universe of swirling gas and rock. This is where we matter to each other and to the ecosystem of the whole planet. This is where we can live a life that leads us to believe and live into an improbably outsized sense of purpose. Where we can live a life that leads us to believe in the miracle of love.  

Maybe all that vertigo-inducing vastness is big enough to contain miracles that can’t be photographed. And maybe not. Maybe all the miracles and everything that matters are right here on Earth.