BY HARRY WEEKES
I love M&Ms. I have loved them across years and across species—classic, peanut, peanut butter, pretzel, almond. Light chocolate. Dark chocolate. Valentine’s, Easter and Christmas editions. One of the first times I voted for anything was when I weighed in on the pending color change in the originals and, to my enduring disappointment, saw one of my favorites—light brown—replaced by blue. Harumph.
One thing I never do with M&Ms is look at the bag (beyond above species identification). I don’t know how many calories they have, what kind of dyes are in them, or if they have even an ounce of nutrition encased in that candy coating.
There are just some details I don’t want to know.
And so it goes with shooting stars.
I walk early. It is dark. The sky is an inky blanket—never black, more an intense deep, dark blue. The stars and planets are twinkling points of light. I invariably see shooting stars. A lot of shooting stars. Not necessarily at once, but in aggregate, over time. And they come in as many species as M&Ms. There are quick ones and slow ones. Long ones and short ones. Ones that are only visible because I happened to be looking at the precise spot at which they appeared, and others that create so much light that I look up to watch them cross a large enough expanse of sky I sometimes wonder if I am going to hear an impact.
I have oodles of questions. Do they hit the ground? Do they come from one direction more than another? Are they falling straight to Earth and it is only our planet’s rotation that makes them seem so fast? What are they made of? What chance is there that one would land anywhere near me?
I am sure the Internet would tell me all there is to know about shooting stars, starting with the fact that they are not stars at all. And I am also sure that I am as disinterested in learning more than what I experience on my walks as I am in figuring out in what ways M&Ms are not healthy for me.
This ignorance is intentional. It is purposeful. And it is directed. Mystery is in many ways like love—it is expansive. The more you have, the more boundless it is. I could look up shooting stars and be awed by their astronomical origin, their chemical composition, and the physics of their lives. That line of inquiry would yield so much, and undoubtedly explode into a thousand courses of study. It would also be familiar.
My current star path is bathing in the unfamiliar; in what I don’t know. It is walking around not quite sure when I will see a shooting star, or which kind it will be. It is intentionally choosing not to know because there is a richness in the ignorance. It is not the narrowing kind of ignorance that closes parts of my mind, but rather one that seems to open it.
Ultimately, there is an element of wonder that not only endures when something is not explained or labeled, but that thrives in the inexplicability. I cannot tell you much about shooting stars, except that every single one is a microcosmic flash of light that always elevates my walks.
Shooting stars are like light-brown M&Ms; while I can’t quite explain them, that doesn’t make them any less yummy.