Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

For a good while after the birth of my son, after we started singing him nursery rhymes, I considered writing a couple of extra verses to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Let me go ahead and say right here that I often over think things. But the song just seemed incomplete as it was. There was a time somewhere in the past when people didn’t know the nature of a star, but here, in this modern world of ours, we understand the forces that create these magnificent objects. We know that they are more than simple, flickering, pinpoints of light hanging gently just beyond our reach in the sky above us. We know that instead they are massive beyond our comprehension, that they reach across greater distances than we can ever imagine, and that there are forces at work within them that we can hardy wrap our minds around. We know that gravity and fusion and radiation are at work in some combination to throw of this light that travels these untold distances to reach our eyes.

The verse I was going to write went something like this, and came right after the second refrain of “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are”:

You’re a flaming ball of gas
Held together by the nuetron’s mass
Fusion makes you burn so bright,
Through the depths of space you shine your light,
Twinkle, Twinkle, great big star,
Now we know just what you are.

Yeah, it’s not that great lyrically, and I am not quite sure the science is spot on, but it is much closer to an accurate description of a star than a “diamond in the sky.” But I never incorporated the verse. It never made its way into my near nightly singing of the song. And the reason for my not incorporating it had nothing to do with the poor lyrics or questionable science. It had more to do with philosophy.

I think it all came to me the day I had my young son propped up on the back of our sofa, looking out the window at the trees waving in the wind and the cars passing by. There was this look in his eyes—sky blue and open wide—that I couldn’t quite discern. But as I sat there and thought to myself, “what is that little boy thinking—what thoughts are lurking behind those bright blue eyes?” it occurred to me that the look that I was seeing was one of wonder. It is not always what we know that makes our lives richer; it is what we wonder about. Wonder is one of the best things I can give my son at this point in his life. After all, it is what he has given me.

And so I never sang the new verse to the song. I don’t want my son to remain ignorant as to what constitutes a star, but he will learn it in time. For now I think it is just as healthy to look up at the sky and wonder about all those diamonds. After all, though not scientifically accurate, it is poetically true. To look at a star and dream is in many ways better than to look at a star and know its composition. After all, our dreams, at last the best of them, are much like stars: they are massive beyond our comprehension, they reach across greater distances than we can ever imagine, and there are forces at work within them that we can hardy wrap our minds around.