I never noticed when it changed, only that it had changed somewhere along the way. I no longer care. Not about the things I used to care about. Not about the things that used to worry me to the point of despair. I know better now, and can no longer feel concern for my old worries. The others don't understand. When I felt they didn't understand my problems, my worries and concerns, they seemed apathetic at best, although I may never know for sure what or how they felt then. But now that I've found a peace, a confidence based on knowledge and purpose, they judge me ill, in every sense. I remember when I thought there was no point to my existence, when I first realized I had gathered together far too much dust from the surrounding nebula, that I would live only an instant and at temperatures far too hot to allow any meaningful planet formation. Early on, the others tried to warn me as I gathered together my hydrogen, tried in vain to tell me that I was being too greedy, that I would burn too brightly, and too hot, to be of any use to any planetary life. I didn't listen. The power I felt as I consolidated my local hydrogen empire was intoxicating, and like any drunk, I couldn't stop if I wanted to, which of course I didn't. Not at first. What did I care for puny planets, small rocky rubble piles or worse yet, puny collections of gas not even worthy of the title Brown Dwarf. I laughed at the meaninglessness of their pursuits, at their small dreams and fantasies. They spoke of planetary systems as if they were some universal goal of creation, the raison d'être. Pshaw! I was going to be the biggest, bluest star I could, the hottest and brightest ever! I would burn so hot they'd feel me for light-years around. Everyone would marvel at my very being, wondering how such a thing could be, how a star could grow so big and bright. I would astound them to their very core!
Slowly, things began to change around me. Our nebula was already starting to break apart. My nebula companions were settling down with their planets, still useless compilations of junk as far as I was concerned. Barren gas and rock, true wastelands of the cosmos. I shudder at my prior ignorance when I think of the pleasure I derived in examining the barrenness of my neighbors planetary systems. That is what I should sacrifice for? - I would say to myself, laughing a satisfied, gluttonous, shamefully prideful laugh. For those pitiful examples of orbiting rubble I should have contained my hunger!? I was King of the Nebula! There was a dance of joy in my core then. I sought out competition, but could find none as far as I could see. No star within sight was even half as hot, nor half as bright as me. I was a wonder to behold and my core burned hot with the knowledge of my greatness. I peered out further into the cosmos, seeking something. I knew there was no better to my glory, but I sought something anyway. I knew not what at that time, though I now clearly see what it was I was seeking.
It was around this time of exploring my surroundings that I first took notice of something which was to eventually become the root of all my woes. One old star several lightyears distant was buzzing with a strange energy I hadn't encountered before. I peered closely at this star whenever I could, not wanting to seem odd or disturbing, but desperate for any clue as to what the source of the strange buzzing, or was it more of a humming, around this old orange star might be. It wasn't long before I determined that the sensations around this ancient star originated in or about one of the planets that circled it. When I focused my attention on that rocky planet the sensations were so strong that it nearly drove me insane with delight. It was joy. It was vibrance. It was chaos, but it was lovely chaos. It was a drumming, chanting, shouting, stomping, dancing celebration of life that thronged from all over the planet. I couldn't believe it at first. There, on what ought by my ignorant reckoning to be nothing more than some collected dust and clumpy dirt, was the universal celebration, a thing I had, apparently wrongly, assumed was only possible deep within the hottest cores of burning stars. It was souls on fire, that benevolent fire that burned with a passion and intensity that made one cease to question life. Fire that made one alive and caused one to desire no more than to be alive, to love, to love life, to feel that fire and to be that fire. That fire burned on that small rocky world, and spread its joy throughout its planetary system all the way to the core of the old orange star at the center of it all, and I knew my destiny right then and there: failure and oblivion. I sensed the pride and joy in the old orange star's core, sensed the contentment and fulfillment that the humming brought to the old star, and I knew I would never know that feeling. In fact, I was an oddity, a thing to be studied for my rareness, but never loved, never beheld as a giver of life to an entire biosphere. I wept bitter tears as my folly became more and more obvious to me. They had tried to tell me, but I wouldn't listen. They were right.
That was some time ago. I'd say it was long ago, but compared to the long lives those happy stars of moderation will live with their planets and their planets' life-forms, my entire existence from boastful start to inevitable finish, will never qualify as long. But to me, it seems like forever ago, as if all of time finished and began again between then and now.
I remember watching with alternating envy and raging frustration the dance of life on various distant neighbors, longing for a chance to participate in that celebration. I didn't know then that I was loved dearly by those dancing souls, that I was even the center of celebration from time to time as I shone so brightly in their night skies. No, I wallowed in self pity, and was blinded by it. I thought only of my irrelevance, and eventual oblivion. Remembered as a life giver by no one. Damned by this. Damned by my own ignorance and greed, my useless pride in self glorification.
It wasn't long before I exhausted my core supply of hydrogen and swelled even larger. Noticing my reddening, I began to meditate. I meditated on the end, of course meditated on purpose, on fate, on the biggest question I could think of: why? Why were things the way they were? Why did I make the choices I made? Why was I so ignorant? These thoughts occupied my years of helium fusion, as I delved deeper and deeper into my essence, trying desperately to come to terms with finality. I occasionally envied those other red stars: the M class dwarfs, which live practically forever, glowing feebly as they stingily process their hydrogen.
As if called upon by thought I one day found myself in conversation with one such red dwarf. He told me of his loneliness, the barrenness of his life. He had been born in a cloud of almost pure hydrogen long ago. In those times the small irregular galaxy he had been born into was separate from our current abode, the two having merged long before my birth, but within my ancient friend's memory. There was little in his environment but hydrogen for most of his existence, and, though he felt quite capable of providing the stability necessary for long term evolution of life, there had just never been enough raw material to create rocky planets. I felt empathy with this poor soul. Here was someone who could understand my pain, who felt it as well. I expressed as much only to be met with an anguished cry of despair from my friend, a soul jarring, wordless rebuke; I had forgotten that my end was near, whereas he was destined to live nearly forever yet, all the while with his pain. Our minds parted company with this. I felt no envy for that poor soul.
My stellar-nursery-mates looked at me with sad star-eyes as I bloated bigger and redder each day. They shook their star-heads, silently disapproving of the shame that I was: just born, and already nearly dead, a bloated red mess. I felt the same way at first. But, subtly, I felt a shift in my awareness. It was sparked by my conversation with the red dwarf. I meditated deeper and deeper on the meaning of creation, undistracted by my disapproving “peers” (though they were never really in the same class as me) who paid me very little direct attention, preferring to talk behind my back about my reckless behavior of late. Throughout this time, as the last of my core helium supply burned and fused, I came to a profound revelation. I didn't realize right away that I had, but something I knew fused with something else I knew, and gradually I realized something I hadn't known before! Or at least I had never thought of it as I now do, never realized just what it was that was lurking in my mind, silently saving me from my own supposed irrelevance.
That orange star that first awakened me to the greater universe of life, it didn't make that glorious joyful planet by any compression of hydrogen. It couldn't have. There were heavier elements present in the cloud from which it grew. And the same had to be true of all the life bearing rocky planets I had observed in my inventory of the cosmos. Yet, as every star is taught in star nursery school, hydrogen is the primary element, the original material of the physical universe, along with trace amounts of helium and lithium. Hydrogen is, nearly everything else is manufactured. The rock of the planets, the carbon of the life-forms, all of it, manufactured!
In...
ME!
Those moderate stars may be suitable for the evolution and sustainment of life, but they could never create the building blocks required for life. Their wimpy masses can't even fuse helium, much less create the truly heavy elements, all the way up to iron!, the way I will when I make my grand exit. The very rock in those glorious planets started out in a beast like me, a massive hot King of a Star. A star which must have lived the very drama I myself live, felt the same irrelevance I felt, only to resign itself to the very sacrifice I now resign myself to: to live in order to die for others. In my death I will finally partake in the cycle by distributing the very elements which grow inside me at this very moment. My supernova will create shock waves in the nearby gas, compressing and seeding the cold clouds, leading to the formation of new star systems heavy with the rocks necessary for the building of planets, rocks which can only exist because I created them with my massive hot core, rocks which would not exist if it weren't for my short, but meaningful, life.