*~* wish upon a star *~*

Part the first
Part the second: wish upon a star!

Some feelings about this awe-inspiring creation of God known as the sky are universal. Particularly, if one looks up at the dark blue blueness of the night. There is something very reflective and enveloping about the curved design of the Heavens - and as many minds have wondered, it may indeed be reflecting some of what we have on Earth, but may not yet have seen? After all, the moon and the stars have been there forever - with respect to a human's ordinary time horizon - and surely they must have seen and known much more? Besides, they are all over the Earth, they travel it, they envelope it, they go round and round seeing everything...

So why not tell me, oh sky, have you seen my like?

Surely, as my thought reflects back on me, having left me, having touched you and then drifted back to me with secrets and answers - somewhere must reflect myself. Can you mirror me, oh majestic sky? And return me to me, with more wisdom, knowledge of eternal secrets, and a sense of endless joy?

Surely, oh wise sky, you have seen my like! There is a sense of knowledge and knowing when I look up at you... as if I have seen this life before, waiting to be spread on Space with Time unfurls... Surely my life has been before, or has been, and waiting to BE for me... there is this sense of duplicity in everything, and very close to it the sense of twin-ness. Certainly, just as my life has been, and I live it once again, there is also duplicity of another kind a duplication of me, and you, oh sky, have been keeping it from me!

When I am with my little friends, I tell them - and oh, they echo my feeling as their own - that I know I cannot be one of a kind. There is another, certainly another, perhaps in another world, on another Earth, somewhere, somewhere who is exactly like myself.

"Do you know," I asked my companion-of-childhood Saba, "that when I just gazed up at that sky, someone else, who is just-like-me, in fact me, in fact may be I am that person who I am thinking about because if they are exactly like me, then they are me...," I got breathless, wide-eyed. Saba remained quite in her wisdom, with an "I know." arranged on her clear face.

"So," I resumed, "do you know, when I just gazed up at the sky, that person did too!?"

"Yes."

Yes, of course. We all knew that secret. Saba, and Mani, and I. The precocious philosophers who knew that everything which only a child can, and somehow able to preserve that precious knowledge through the adolescent and adult years. But this is the wandering of a wondering mind!

It was a secret we knew with the seriousness of the child who had the opportunity to lie under the sky, and the faculty of wonder to probe it. And along came Age, and no longer were we privileged to have that peek into heavenly secrets, to converse with the stars, and search for a reflection of our souls under the umbrella of the night sky.

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Many years have passed since. Not a moment for the eternal sky, but certainly a useful lifetime for a child who matured and seasoned over time. The sky changed for the adults, but it all must have remained the same over the years, with stars falling over in its vast expanses.

When we were children, we did not know about this wishing-upon-a-star business, but you know, a child's heart if so full of wishes, ever, and particularly when it yearns to know, know, and find. While we watched so many stars break into a glorious trail over our heads, we must have been wishing. Of eternal things, such as learning about the Beginning and the End, and more specifically - of more earthly things such as: WHO is that other me? WHERE is that other me? ? ? ?

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"When I was a small boy, I used to think, yaar! There must be someone like me in this world!" he said, his starry eyes fixed on mine.

"Um-hmm," I gestured him to go on.

"Do you know what I used to think?"

Yes.

"You'll think it's crazy, but even as a child, I used to think, ya Allah! There must be someone like me. Will I ever find her? How will I find her? Will I find her when I am really old?"

"Um-hmm. Yes?"

"But you know, I was sure. I will find her." He paused, and looked into my eyes in that affectionate, amused way - and in that instance, I had seen a reflection of myself, a knowledge of all things there, a gateway to reality in those gentle eyes. We remained silent awhile as he held warmly onto my hand.

"Hmmm." I finally murmured. "I know. I always did know. I wished for you too. I knew someday I would find you - find my soul, if I searched hard enough...?" I looked at our hands, with their destinies inter-twined and sighed. " I had once wished you upon a star!"