“The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.”Rabindranath Tagore · Păsări răzlețe · 1916 · 42
The fuller the sky of lights, the emptier it is of closeness.
The verse opposes two movements: children huddle together out of an instinct for closeness, while stars, though they fill the sky with light, are separated by vast distances. The mechanism is the paradox of abundance: the fuller the world is with lights, with people, with contacts, the emptier it is of real closeness. An adult with hundreds of online acquaintances and no close friend lives exactly this: scattered brilliance, lost gathering. Childhood gathers, adulthood thins out.
Why it matters A warning for adult life full of contacts: counting your lights does not replace closeness.