Someone looked at a post I wrote on my blog about taking some time and making an effort to go out and look at the stars, and decided to do this.

It’s just tiny words, and if I were in a different place, emotionally, I’d delete it and move on. But because of where I am emotionally, it stung. I’m sure this person doesn’t see me as a fellow human, who is struggling with profoundly painful grief and loss, who doesn’t deserve to be treated with such casual cruelty.

I’m sure this person is young, is likely suffering in his own way (because everybody is going through something), and is trying to make himself feel better by being hurtful and cruel to someone he views as a safe target.

Look, I’m happy to take this, if it means that a real person in this guy’s life doesn’t become the target of his cruelty, but I’d rather not take it at all. I’d rather that this person stopped before they decided to be so casually cruel.

This person won’t get the public attention they crave (hence the pixelizing), and I doubt that they’ll even see this post, because they probably don’t spend much time away from 4chan and the toxic subreddits, because that’s where this person finds others who are as miserable and cruel as he is.

But I do hope that he matures, develops empathy, and when he has a choice about how he’s going to treat someone in the future, he chooses kindness instead of this sort of thing.

Life is incredibly short, and there’s so much pain and cruelty out there. Do your best to not be part of that.

Remember, when you were younger, all the times you would go outside at night, just to look up at the stars? Remember how happy it made you feel? Remember taking out a star chart, so you could find a constellation or a galaxy? Remember how cool it felt to know that, even if you couldn’t see the visible light from a Messier Object, you at least knew you were looking at it? Remember putting down a blanket and watching meteor showers all night long? Remember the first time you saw a satellite flare and convinced yourself you’d seen a flying saucer?

Remember how magical and humbling and inspiring it felt to just go outside specifically to look at the stars and planets, sometimes with a telescope, other times with binoculars, most times with just your eyes? Remember the first time you really thought about the reality of our existence? That we’re tiny little specks of life on an improbably perfect planet, speeding through space at incomprehensible speeds, protected by a thin layer of atmosphere from specks of dust and rock that are also speeding around in space, just like we are?

Does anyone else remember that? Or is it just me, getting older, rewatching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and desperately wanting to revisit a time when it didn’t seem like our improbably perfect planet was teetering on the brink of catastrophe?

When’s the last time you got away from your phone or tablet or TV or whatever, pulled your head out of the garbage fire we’re living in, and went outside, just to look at the stars, pick out some constellations, and feel the size and magnitude of our universe?

I can’t remember the last time I did. I can’t even tell you how long it’s been. That makes me feel profoundly sad.

So tonight, I’m going to do a some stargazing. If I’m lucky, I may even find what I’m looking for.

I wrote this at 1am local time last night:

I’m in New York.

I’m jetlagged. I have to get up in six hours for an important meeting and then an important shoot.

I’m trying to fall asleep, and I’m thinking about how I can rewrite the first few paragraphs of my novel, because while I was proofing it today, I kept feeling like it could be better. Like, it’s fine, but I can be better, you know?

So I’m finally starting to drift off to sleep, and my brain goes HEY HERE IS THE WAY TO CHANGE THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY, SO YOU ARE HAPPY WITH IT.