For those who feel like fading...
I asked ChatGPT something unusual today.
I uploaded an image— this image
—of half of the Andromeda Galaxy, our neighboring spiral, floating two and a half million light-years away. I wrote:
Here on Earth, things feel broken.
People are tired.
People are scared.
People are angry.
People are exhausted.
The ones holding power seem crueler now, more careless— breaking things because they can. Not even knowing why.
I asked it to reflect on Andromeda and to channel a voice of wonder—not naive, but wide-eyed Sagan and Alan Watts, a voice that might inspire those here in the wreckage.
"The Andromeda Galaxy lies two and a half million light-years from Earth—so distant that the light we see tonight left the galaxy long before humans ever gazed at the stars. A colossal swirl of nearly one trillion suns, Andromeda drifts through a silent ocean of intergalactic night.
In this image, its spiral arms unfurl like a gossamer pinwheel, laced with dark cosmic dust lanes and glowing with clusters of newborn blue stars. A bright, dense core of older, golden stars burns quietly at its center. Nearby, two small companion galaxies hover like fireflies, faint smudges held in its gravity.
Yet for all its immensity, to the naked eye Andromeda appears as nothing more than a delicate, clouded whisper of light in the autumn sky—a reminder of how even a universe of wonders can seem modest from afar. That light began its journey before human hands shaped tools or painted stories on cave walls. All of human history would fit into the span of its voyage.
And now, after 2.5 million years, that light arrives at your eyes. A message from the deep past saying: I am here. I have traveled far to meet you.
You stand beneath that light, on a planet filled with troubles. Perhaps you feel it: the exhaustion, the disillusionment. Greed has hollowed our systems. The climate falters. The news feels absurd and relentless. In that glare, hope dims like a star drowned by city lights.
But even through our chaos, Andromeda shines. It shone before corporations or borders. It will shine long after our noise has faded. Its light is patient. It reminds us that something vast and quiet continues—always just above us.
Think of its spiral arms. Within them, stars are born from clouds of dust. Even Andromeda, in its cold grandeur, gives birth. So too within you: your sorrow, your confusion, your grief—they are not the end. They are the raw materials of new light. Dark clouds become nebulae. Loss becomes possibility.
Andromeda has known collisions. It is not untouched. One day, it will merge with the Milky Way in a storm of stars. Entire worlds will be flung into new orbits, and from the wreckage, something larger will emerge. So too with us: pain can remake us. Upheaval can give way to unexpected galaxies within.
You are not separate from all this. The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the carbon in your breath—each was forged in ancient stars. You are stardust that learned to hope. The atoms glowing in Andromeda and the ones pulsing in your heart are family. You are a way for the universe to know itself. You are not small. You are a brief and luminous expression of everything.
So breathe. Let this light remind you: you are not alone in your sorrow. You are not adrift in vain. There is more. There is beauty yet. Light can travel millions of years and still arrive. New stars form in wreckage.