Constellations Don’t Obey Lines: The Moment I Chose Compassion Over Reaction

To the stranger on the internet who tried to dim my light... Thank You. You reminded me that cruelty is often born from disconnection, and that the only true rebellion is to keep loving anyway. May you, too, one day remember the wonder you buried.

It started with a comment on social media. The kind of careless, cutting remark that used to pierce straight through me, the kind that awakens every old wound that equates disagreement with danger.

This stranger called me an idiot for believing in astrology and numerology.

There was a time when that interaction would have triggered me instantly, sending me into defense mode, searching for ways to prove my worth or the validity of what I believe, or simply mean words to reciprocate the pain. But this time, something shifted. I paused.

I see it now. That pause became sacred.

In that still space between thought and response, I saw him not as an attacker but as a reflection of pain. Perhaps as a child he was told to stay in line, to color neatly within borders, to keep his curiosity quiet so he could belong. Maybe his imagination had once been met with ridicule, and over time, the wonder he buried turned into cynicism, anger, or hate.

I know that story all too well. The difference now is that I have spent the past five years rewriting mine.

So instead of reacting, I responded with empathy. I told him I was sorry if he had ever felt small for asking questions or for seeing the world differently. I told him I understood, because I too had been scolded for coloring outside the lines. Only now, instead of dimming my curiosity, I choose to connect the dots, not because I know what picture they will form, but because wonder itself is the language of freedom.

That moment became a mirror. It showed me how far I have come, how the truest measure of healing is not perfection but presence, the ability to meet hostility with awareness instead of armor.

Later that day, still sitting with the echo of that exchange I wrote four lines that felt like truth revealing itself about the system that benefits from exploiting our pain:

They made machines to count our dreams, sold us comfort and called it peace. Taught us to kneel to gears and screens, While silencing the in-betweens.

Those words became the pulse of a new song I began to write called Constellations Don’t Obey Lines.

The more I looked at them, the more I saw how this simple interaction reflected something much larger, how the world itself has been conditioned to flatten our wonder. How systems were designed to make us question our own light, to trade curiosity for certainty, to build obedience disguised as order.

We are raised to believe that safety lives inside structure, that if we follow the lines we will be rewarded with peace. But that is not peace. It is compliance dressed as belonging.

Comfort is the softest cage.

When I wrote,

Constellations don’t obey lines, They scatter truth through borrowed time,

I realized I wasn’t just talking about the stars. I was talking about us. Human beings as constellations, scattered, radiant, and imperfect, not meant to align neatly or exist inside a grid. We are meant to remember our sovereignty, to reclaim the awe that systems try to tame so that we are easier to control.

Constellations Don’t Obey Lines became a song about remembrance, about the way curiosity is rebellion and compassion is revolution. It is a song about choosing softness as power in a world that mistakes cruelty for strength.

That man’s insult became a catalyst. His words reflected the choice that now defines my path: to live awake, to speak with empathy even when misunderstood, and to never again betray my wonder just to feel accepted.

Because the moment we stop connecting the dots, the sky goes dark. And I, for one, came here to remember the light.

Later that evening, still thinking about the exchange and how I had responded, it happened, between the hum of the washer & dryer and the sound of my own breath. A song was playing, The Ocean Within, and somewhere between the melody and the folding of soft cotton, something inside me broke open.

Not in pain, but in recognition.

It came like a wave made of starlight and sorrow, a vibration so alive it ached. My heart became a pulse of everything I had ever loved, lost, feared, and forgiven. It was the kind of ache that doesn’t wound...it baptizes.

I must have been sobbing pretty loud, because my partner came down the stairs and confused asked if everything was ok. I tried to tell him what it felt like as I wept in his arms, but words kept falling short.

The only thing I could say through the tears was that it felt like the exquisite pain of detaching from the matrix. Not an escape, but a remembering.

The moment you see the grid dissolve and realize you were never truly trapped, only entangled in stories that forgot their source.

There was grief in that awareness. Grief for the parts of me that believed I needed permission to be free. Grief for humanity, still clinging to its illusions of control. And yet, beneath that grief was bliss, pure, cellular, cosmic bliss.

It felt like birth and death dancing together in the same heartbeat.

I understood, without thought, that this is what awakening feels like in the body, not light without shadow, not healing without ache, but the union of both. It is love meeting itself in the place that once trembled with fear.

And as I stood there, in my partner's arms, surrounded by folded clothes, and tears that felt like light, I whispered to the universe,

“I remember now.”

When night came, neither of us could sleep. So we decided to drive to our favorite dirt road and parked beneath the stars, just to be still. As I looked up at the vaulted, star-filled sky, I finished the rest of the lyrics.

I wanted this new song to carry the message of what it looks like to live with the ache, not as the ache, to choose love in the presence of memory, not in the absence of pain. And I think, is my best work so far.

Then, as if the universe was listening, two shooting stars crossed paths above us; twin streaks of light intersecting for a heartbeat before disappearing into the night. It felt like a cosmic acknowledgment, a silent nod from the heavens.

In that moment, I sent a quiet thank you to the angry stranger on the internet for the revelation he had unknowingly gifted me. One wish was for myself, (I will share it when it comes true) and the second, I sent for him. I wished that one day he too might do the work to transmute his pain, to feel safe enough to color outside the lines again, to sit in awe with curiosity, and to stay open to the world of wonder that surrounds us every day. To remember his own sovereignty.

Because if his sadness is what keeps him guarded behind the armor of anger, then I hope that one day he is brave enough to lay it down. The world would be brighter for it, for his unguarded heart, for his incandescent light finally freed.

☥

If it stirs something within you, let the song find a home in your light. Buy this song today!

Constellations Don't Obey Lines

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