Minutia

Thoughts written on New Year's Day 2008

Last night the skies were clear and vast, the stars innumerable.  How apropos that on the final eve of Anno Domini 2007 to be given such a broad and bright view of infinite space when mortals contemplate the promise of a new year.  As each passing year seems to move quicker than the last, I felt caught and unprepared as I gazed upward.  Regardless to the absence of my resolution, the ball dropped.  In my little corner of the world the New Year slipped in quietly without fanfare yet with plenty of retrospect on my part.  Upon rising this morning I picked up a book and of all things began reading about the constellation Gemini.  Being an uneducated stargazer I read on to learn the lore of the twins Castor and Pollux who ceaselessly light the night skies.

The story of this celestial collection of stars, like many others, is rooted in Greek mythology.  Twins united in youth, Pollux the immortal and Castor the immortal became separated and miserable through time and its course of events.  Eventually Zeus relented, granting immortality to Castor and thus allowing the reunited eternal heavenly embrace of the brothers.  Great, ancient and mythic stories have provided insight to humankind throughout the ages.  Did the last moments of 2007 have an eternal truth shining in the skies for me?

Interpretation by some has held that the twins represent our separate selves, Castor symbolizing the earthbound and sensible and Pollux as divine or inspired.  The practicality of life calls us to separate these two halves ourselves, proceeding for the greater part of our lives in a "Castor-like" way.  Midway through the human journey there seems to be in most a yearning for something different.  This theory holds that this is the longing for our otherworldly "Pollux-like" selves. 

Did the heavenly skies deliver a mission for me to pursue in this New Year? Am I to discover and illuminate an otherworldly self, my unlived life?