Am I Still Destined For Greatness?

On comparing yourself to Astronauts, Actors and Olympians; charting quarter-life crises through the lens and lifecycle of stars.

Stellar Nebula — a beginning, destined for greatness

A cloud of gas and dust in space. Nebulae are the birthplaces of stars.

From my very beginning, my own Big Bang, I have always wanted to be a part of something great. Something vast, immense, fantastical. This desire tugged on me with gravity— I grew in all directions at a sprinting pace, racing through elastic time on the playground in search of kismet. Pure, nebulous potential stuffed into broderie socklets and scuffed Mary-Janes– all of me, all of you, all of everything; gritty, ferocious stardust. Our bone-marrow, our whispering eyelashes, and the gentle tips of our pinkie fingers.

I still don’t know which form greatness may take, but I do know this. When I’m wrapped like an ornament in papery bedsheets beneath blinking, winking hospital lights, when the squeal of shoes on linoleum flooring marks the slow orbit of family around my deathbed, when I look back through time and weigh the sum of my earth-years in wrinkled palms, I want to say, "yes, I was a part of something that mattered".

But… why? Why do I feel this way? Why am I writing this now, spiralling about destiny at only twenty-one when I should really be thinking about rent and groceries and Friday night? Because, I say again, I still don’t know what form greatness may take.

And, well, humankind went to the moon this week.

For the first time in 58 years, we sent a crew into lunar orbit. They launched a rocketship affectionately named Artemis (II); Apollo’s twin, goddess of the hunt, patron of young girls and mothers. She is carrying the first woman, mission specialist Christina Koch, into deep space.

As I write this, she is 230,000 miles from Earth, the light from their spacecraft takes 1.3 seconds to reach us and they're travelling at 1000s of miles an hour. She has etched her name into the historical record. How magical! And how (selfishly) inconvenient; that greatness is flying right over my head and I am craning my neck to the heavens, a fledgling star-gazer, left in their dust.

It all got me thinking… again. From the Greco-Roman greats who mapped constellations, to the first woman to walk among them— I so desperately want to be among these pioneers of art, culture, and history. Call it FOMO. 

We have always looked upward for purpose, place and our reason for being. Some people call it God, others believe in the witchery of science. I don’t have any thoughts to cast into this ring, but I have long known I am supposed to be stitched into the colourful quilt of human endeavour. At least, in my own peculiar way. 

Protostar — childhood dreams, limitless becoming

An early formation of a star that has recently condensed out of an interstellar cloud and which is not yet hot enough for hydrogen burning to start. Protostars derive their energy from gravitational contraction.

Greatness means different things to different people. When Timothée Chalamet climbed onto the world stage, ruffled some feathers and confessed “I am in pursuit of greatness,” I wonder what blazed through your mind? Was it a career? A family? Awards, fame and fortune? Was it an education? Athleticism? Perhaps you, too, wanted to somersault out of Earth’s orbit and into the vacuum of space to dance among the stars?

I have never had that particular inclination. I am quite happy being great on this planet with steady, gravelly ground beneath my planted feet. But I once had many illogical fantasies of my future success.

Things I wanted to be ages 6-18:

• A figure skater
• A chess-master
• A marine biologist in the tropics 
• A costume designer
• A rockstar in a fur coat
• An astrophysicist, like Brian Cox 
• Then, a nuclear physicist
• A forensic pathologist
• An archivist

It goes without saying, I have always wanted to be a writer. I was born for it, I think.

I wanted to be so many people. I think there’s something quite magnificent about a child who looks around at their world and says “yes, I’m going to try all of it”, like a foodie at a buffet.

But I am not that child (even though I sometimes still feel like her). I can tell you honestly, when Timothée said what he said, I thought of… nothing; only the overwhelming urge to follow him into this greatness and stretch out, like a cat in a patch of warm, milky sunlight, to bask in all its glory. I admit I’m at a crossroads, in dire straits. I am about to be released into adulthood (nobody to referee my schedule, fluff my essays, or grade my progress) and I don't know which way to go for the best. 

I have somehow forgotten what greatness means to me.

Seeing Artemis’ crew achieve feats of astronomical proportions makes childhood dreams seem small. Not insignificant, but in the sense of scattered and distant. This is the quiet, rising panic of quarter-life crises (not to be mistaken for mid-life crises). Not feeling as though you have few options, but far too many. And, navel-gazing, none feel like your one, great purpose.

I have no clue what to do with my life and I am pulled in all directions. That restlessness is not (yet) a failure. I think it’s evidence of wanting a life that feels full, not just successful. However, I am overcome with anxiety. How do I fill it? Am I too late? Too early? Should I pursue one passion or scatter myself across all of them? What if I pick the wrong path and miss the right turning? Has that already happened?

Main Sequence — comparison, feeling left behind

Stars at this stage are called main-sequence stars. When all the hydrogen at the core of a main-sequence star has been converted into helium, the star swells to become a red giant, about 100 times its previous size and with a cooler, redder surface.

I feel this way often; panicked. Recently, when watching the Winter Olympics.

I used to figure skate, you see. I competed in the junior national sphere, and I was good. But I was falling behind. By the time I graduated skate-school, prodigies were competing internationally. They had coaches, sponsors, tight routines and direction. I wrestled with this comparison and, eventually, it got the better of me. I zipped up my rink-bag tight, a tomb for youthful ambition, and never unsealed it again.

Then, a decade later, Alyssa Liu won gold at Milano Cortina. And panic splintered into jealousy. She is a year my junior. If, a big IF, I had dedicated my time, energy and, yes, money to skating, that may have been me, my accomplishment, my great contribution to legacy. 

Sitting square-eyed before the TV, it is this envy –creeping, ugly, insidious comparison– that reminds me of a favourite quote from Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, Interstellar.

“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we only look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.” - Christopher Nolan, 2014

Call me Narcissus, but, from the jump, my first thought was not one marvelling at the achievements and advancements of humankind, (our one great leap, if you will) whether it be in science, sport or culture; I thought about me. I thought about little me and all her little dreams and how she looked up, head cradled in hands, and professed them to wishing stars, blindly hoping they might just come true.

But, as I have grown, I have become so bogged down by life, so worried about my place in the dirt, that these hopes dim and dwindle as I try to compete with brilliance.

The pressure keeps growing and growing and growing. My peers are lining up jobs, musicians and actors my age collect accolades, astronauts sail to heights I cannot even imagine. I am not an Olympian like Alyssa Liu, I am not in space-school like Christina Koch, I am not an actor like Timothée Chalamet. I cannot even land an internship?! LinkedIn has become my arch nemesis, financial security seems like a pipe-dream and I am being chewed up in the machine of late-stage Capitalism (a conversation for another time). 

And still, I feel the weight of worldly expectation bearing down on me; I am Atlas propping up the sky. Pressure to succeed, but at what?

Here is where my star framework falters, just a little. A star in main-sequence burns steadily, predictably, and with definite purpose; I am supposed to do the same. I am supposed to stabilise, find my centre, focus that energy, radiate warmth and light in a useful, meaningful, productive way for the masses to admire from a distance. Instead, I find myself... floundering.

Red Giant — confusion, internal pressure

Any large bright star with a cool surface. It is thought to represent a late stage in the evolution of a star like the Sun, as it runs out of hydrogen fuel at its centre and begins to burn heavier elements, such as helium, carbon, and silicon. Because of more complex nuclear reactions that then occur in the red giant's interior, it eventually becomes gravitationally unstable and begins to collapse and heat up.

The same forces that once made me feel limitless --school, parents, friendships-- are now beginning to feel a lot like living in a pressure cooker. Still, we have spoken about external forces, but what about the wants from within? Stars feel the rending of gravity, but also the dense, furious heat at their own stellar core. I want everything. I want what everyone else has. I want my own thing. My own niche. My own spark. My own… something, to boot. I recently read The Bell Jar (as a literature student, this was long overdue) and Sylvia Plath analogised this better than I could ever hope to:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. … I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” - Sylvia Plath, 1963

For a while, writing satisfied the urge to reach for figs in all directions and gorge myself on life’s eternal pleasures. It made regret less sharp around the edges when none fell into my lap. It is the one thing I have come back to again and again, because I can be anything in writing; I can invent whole worlds on the page in which my paper variants flourish. But the one under my feet keeps moving, keeps rotating in rings around our sun and with every turn completed, I am growing older.

At such a pivotal point in my life, I realised: I want to be great here, in the real world.

And I am not.

And I still want to be. And I care. And that twists into something small, splintery and deeply ungracious when I see others succeeding, as I mentioned. This is not a feeling I'm proud of.

The easy-to-come-by fuel of childhood fantasy, energy, and self-motivation has run low. I am left to burn myself out on envy, self-doubt, anxiety and spite until an eventual collapse with my stomach in knots, hot and flustered with indignation. After which I shall accept my ordinary fate. This is the destiny of a star, and also that of a quote-unquote ‘gifted kid’ (a popularised phrase to describe children demonstrating high aptitude and potential); to stretch themselves far, and wide, and thin. I am taking up more space than I know what to do with, and still impossibly hollow at my very centre– a tension pulling tight between my wants, all these figs.

I wanted to be so many bright people and I became none of them. As we speak, I am watching those figs “wrinkle” and rot and wither in the pearly grasses “at my feet”. I am feeling very sorry for myself.

Supernova — death and new meaning

The explosive death of a star, which temporarily attains a brightness of 100 million Suns or more, so that it can shine as brilliantly as a small galaxy for a few days or weeks.

Those dreams are gone. I am an optimist, not a liar. I will never skate on Olympic rinks, I will never display my work on the silver screen, I will never study physics. I am too late. My starlit sky of childhood dreams simply… sputtered out. But, at the risk of sounding like your school science teacher, I’d like to remind you of the first law of thermodynamics (these are big, irrelevant words for a simple concept– no definition required):

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another." - Albert Einstein, unknown

When those ambitions collapsed, imploded and, yes, died, they gave me the skills, time, and passion to birth new ones. 

Supernovas create nebulae create stars create supernovas. 

Figs grow, figs fall, figs wrinkle and rot and feed the soil from which new plants and flowers burst open.

It is the way of things. It is the end of quarter life crises– the realisation that you will exist, grow, burn, struggle, collapse under the weight of it all and then… slowly, you will rebuild and live again, in another way, another form, to another end. You will still carry all your lessons and materials with you, like I do. 

I have hung up my medals on a pinboard. My chessboard collects dust, thick as velvet, on a shelf in my bedroom. But, I still pursue all these passions in small, enjoyable ways; volunteering, climate marches, tailoring clothes with delight and embroidering. I sing to myself in the shower and lovingly curate my vinyl collection (of which I'm very proud). I read far and wide about space and science and history. And I write it all down. I had my skates sharpened last week, booked a course of lessons, and I am returning to the ice as an adult. For fun!

I might not have one all consuming purpose, but I have a great interest in life. Just sort of in general.

I may not have extraordinary achievements strapped under my proverbial belt, but what matters to me still matters.

These renowned people I have mentioned might begin their pursuits with aspirations of greatness, like me and you, but they continue to work, or train, or study with passion. And perhaps that is more important; finding your great love, not your great success. One may follow the other. If you navigate everything with passion —art, science, people, places— if you make your horizons as broad and bright as possible, and love wholly, maybe that is where you find profundity?

I think it’s enough to say “I love my life”, no matter how big or small or what you do with it. I think it’s enough to look back one day in your golden years and say “I had a great time” and “I made a great impact on the people around me”. Like a dying star, a supernova, so long as you spit out all your warmth, spread it far and wide across space and time, and allow other people to feel it, you have done your very best, your very greatest. And that is enough to satisfy.

At least, it comforts me to believe that. 

Now, I am not going to tell you that this personal philosophy is going to help you bag a job, or find a boyfriend, or address the cause of your quarter-life crisis, but it will help remedy the symptoms; anxiety, jealousy, doubt, whatever they may be.

While comparison is natural, the lesson here is not to compete with other ‘stars’, but to appreciate their hard-work and dedication while understanding it is not the absence of your own. We all have time. We all have a unique zest for life, learning and, eventually, achieving.

So, with respect to the people, from mathematicians, to caterers, to cosmonauts, to mission control, to all that have come before us and Artemis II (godspeed!), who have made spaceflight and dreaming more possible, I shall leave you with a little maxim. It is also a reminder for all of us– we are still great and we are still capable.

Per aspera ad astra– through hardship to the stars.

Another spiral, grace-fully done xx


Works cited:

Albert Einstein, unkown

Christopher Nolan, Interstellar

Stephen O'Meara, A Dictionary of Space

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar