The solar system, well, all of space, really, is kept in order by the force of gravity. It keeps moons orbiting planets, planets orbiting stars, starts orbiting each other in binary systems or galaxies. All of it is kept together with the principles of inertia and gravity. Because of inertia, satellites keep moving forward. Because of gravity, they are constantly pulled toward whatever they orbit.
People are kept together that way, too. Sometimes they orbit other people, other times ideas or beliefs or feelings. There are occasional collisions and changes in course, but people are constantly moving and constantly being pulled one way or another by something. Except this time that something is not gravity. It's life.
You can see it in the way people communicate. They talk about someone being so full of life, someone who radiates it. There are so many quotes about the difference between living and simply existing. Some people seem to just grab life and exude a powerful influence over others--they bring people together and give them purpose. In this system then, people are the satellites, and life is gravity.
There are plenty of interesting interactions that occur as different sources of gravity exert their influence over objects in space. Some collide, others change orbits, and still others maintain their steady paths for what seems like an eternity. People do the same. They meet others, encounter the force of their life and either change their course if they are strongly influenced or keep moving forward as they were.
Yet perhaps the most interesting things in space happen when something is destroyed. There is a difference between death and dying, and the key lies in timescale and effect. Death is an event. It is the supernova that blasts a star to pieces, taking so little time yet producing this massive change. Dying is a slow process. It is happening constantly. As a star is using up first all hydrogen, then helium, then heavier elements. Dying is the march forward through time, the inevitable approach to death. It is long and often steady, making progress constantly yet hardly ever observed.
People say they are afraid of dying, yet they are dying every day. Each hour they march closer to death. Each day their cells become more damaged and less capable of repairing themselves. But nobody thinks of this until something happens. Until they are facing death. Because death reminds us of what the process of dying is all approaching. That we are constantly approaching this state of not existing. Of no longer being here.
Those who fear dying are fools. They are doing it every day. Dying cannot be prevented. But being afraid of death? That's a different story. Death has a tendency among humans to appear when it was not being expected. With stars you can at least see the changes that signal the end is near, and even with a collision you see it long enough before it happens that you can at least prepare. But humans don't have the luxuries of the cosmos. For us things sometimes just happen and we have no control over them.
And once a star is gone, there is nothing left to orbit. Sometimes it destroys its satellites on its way out. But always, there is nothing left of nearly the same intensity that there previously was. With nothing left to orbit then, the satellites go off in different directions, some propelled by inertia from their orbit alone, others having been imparted momentum by the death of what they once orbited. So people are left to move on past death. There is no longer life from this source to keep them on the path they followed, so they must choose another.
Some move forward from where they were, following a course as similar as possible to the way they lived before. Others are shocked and altered by the experience and change radically. Some may have been destroyed at the end of the process of dying, but previous to death. And others find themselves lacking enough momentum to go anywhere, so they hover or crawl close to where the life had been, until someone with more life comes by and starts their orbit anew.
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