Unlike other kids, Shooli's childhood was different. He wasn't dreaming in his sleep, his dreams made him sleepless at times.
Those long, restless nights found Shooli lying awake, staring through the cracked skylight above his small bed. While other children drifted off to sleep with stories of kingdoms and heroes, Shooli stayed awake, tracing stars with his eyes.
The night sky, with its endless sprinkle of light, felt like a secret map drawn just for him.
He didn’t need fairy tales; the real magic was happening millions of light-years away, and somehow, it made him feel less alone.

In a town where practicality was prized above all else, dreams were often viewed with suspicion, as if ambition were a contagious affliction that had to be cured by reason.
Shooli had chosen engineering, believing it to be the safer path, the one that would earn him approval and stability.
He told himself it was the sensible choice, even as a small voice inside him whispered otherwise.
Under the heavy weight of expectations and the silent fear of failure, he had convinced himself to let go of his bigger dreams.
It was only later that he realized — by choosing the path everyone praised, he had wandered far from the life he truly wanted.

Thus, an engineer he became—not through his own will, but through a quiet coercion disguised as advice.
Projects were completed, deadlines were met, promotions were offered—and yet, each achievement felt like a stone added to the mausoleum of his forgotten passions.
The life he lived was not his own, but one meticulously drafted by the expectations of others.

It was during one particularly inactive evening, as the fluorescent hum of the office lights grated against his frayed patience, that a question was asked by a junior colleague:
"Sir, if you weren’t an engineer, what would you be?"
The question, casually tossed across the sterile cubicle walls, struck Shooli with an almost earth-shaking impact.

For a moment, the present dissolved, and he delved into memories that had been meticulously buried.
The child who made paper rockets that defied gravity in the confines of his imagination.
The teenager who stayed up all night decoding Carl Sagan’s universe.
He remembered especially the night he read about the Pale Blue Dot — that tiny, fragile speck captured by Voyager 1 as it drifted beyond our solar system.
"Look again at that dot," Sagan had said. "That's here. That's home. That's us."
Those words had once cracked open the universe inside Shooli's mind.
He had felt it then — the humbling, staggering truth that Earth, with all its glories and griefs, was just a faint mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
And somehow, knowing that made life feel both heartbreakingly small and unspeakably precious.

By the time Shooli returned to himself, the clock hands had circled past midnight. That night, as the city was swaddled in an indifferent slumber, Shooli took the first step toward reclaiming his soul. A dusty journal, once gifted and long neglected, was unearthed from the bottom drawer of his desk.
Its pages, still blank and waiting, felt like they had been patiently saving a space just for him.

He hesitated at first.
What could he possibly write?
What authority did he possess to ink a story when for three decades he had chosen the safer road, silencing his true dreams with his own hands?

And yet, the pen was lifted—not by certainty, but by defiance.
The first words were written in a kind of quiet, almost sacred, daze.

"This is the story of a boy who forgot he was made of stars."

The act was small, yet it shook the foundation of the life he had built. He knew then that his story would no longer be shaped by the fears of a world too afraid to dream.
He would no longer be just a small part of a life that never truly felt like his own.

With every word inscribed, Shooli was reclaiming ownership of his destiny.
The prose was not crafted with literary sophistication; it was inspired by something far rarer—authenticity.
Each sentence was a brick, and with them, he was constructing a bridge between who he was to become and who he was always meant to be.

In the days that followed, Shooli found himself possessed by a feverish clarity.
While the world around him continued its clockwork monotony, his inner universe was being expanded, constellation by constellation.
Astrophysics books, abandoned years ago, were dusted off and devoured with a ferocity that astonished even him.
Applications for amateur astronaut programs were filled out and submitted.

He realized, with an almost painful tenderness, that success was not necessarily measured by where one stood, but by the courage with which one pursued motion.
The stars had not moved away from him; he had simply turned his back on them for too long.

It was during a quiet Sunday afternoon, as golden rays sprawled lazily across his apartment floor, that the decision was cemented.
His resignation letter was composed, not out of bitterness but out of profound liberation.
He was not running away from something; he was running toward someone—himself.

The final line of his diary that day read:

"Let it be recorded that Shooli chose to live among the improbable, rather than die in the comfort of the certain."

The story he had begun that night was no mere hobby.
It was a blueprint for a new life.
A life where he would weave science and wonder together, telling stories of our place in the vast, humbling cosmos.
A life where he would remind others, through his words and dreams, that we are all passengers together on this fragile, blue speck — and that perhaps, our greatest duty is to care more fiercely, dream more bravely, and love more deeply.

Though he knew the road ahead would be rough—marked by rejection, loneliness, and the occasional whisper of doubt, Shooli no longer feared it.
After all, it had been written by his own hand that he was made of stars—and stars were never meant to stay caged to the ground.

As the first shuttle roared into the blue on the screen before him—an image he watched with tear-filled eyes—Shooli whispered to himself,
"I have finally begun."