Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

“Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.” — so mused Jack Kerouac, the restless wanderer of words and spirit, whose pen captured the pulse of a generation seeking meaning in the vastness of existence. Beneath this tender and fleeting image lies a truth that is as old as time: that life is both brief and luminous, a momentary spark between birth and eternity. In these few words, Kerouac captures the essence of impermanence — the delicate balance between the smallness of man and the grandeur of the universe. His voice, both wistful and wise, reminds us that to live fully, we must first recognize how swiftly life passes, and yet how brightly it can shine.

The origin of this quote lies in the poetic heart of Kerouac’s philosophy. As one of the great voices of the Beat Generation, he lived with fierce intensity, chasing experience as though it were a form of prayer. His travels across America, his nights beneath desert skies, his endless conversations with drifters, poets, and dreamers — all of it was an attempt to grasp the rhythm of life itself. For Kerouac, existence was not something to be tamed or planned, but to be felt — to be lived with open eyes, even if only for a moment before the stars fade. When he says life is “a wink of the eye,” he is reminding us that we are here only for an instant, and yet that instant can contain all the beauty of the cosmos.

In his image of “winking stars,” Kerouac bridges the human and the divine, the momentary and the eternal. The wink of an eye is the brief gesture of a mortal; the winking stars are the eternal companions above, flickering through time as witnesses to every life that has ever been. In the poet’s imagination, the two are one and the same — our small, transient lives are reflections of the infinite dance of the heavens. Just as the stars blink against the dark, so too do our lives shine for a heartbeat before returning to the silence from which we came. Yet in that fleeting shimmer, there is meaning — for it is through that brief light that the universe knows itself.

Consider the story of Vincent van Gogh, another soul who looked to the stars for solace and understanding. In his painting The Starry Night, he gave form to the same revelation Kerouac would later express in words: that life is short and turbulent, yet filled with transcendent beauty. Van Gogh’s swirling heavens were not mere decoration; they were his cry of wonder, his belief that the universe, though vast and indifferent, was still filled with spirit. Like Kerouac, he saw in the stars a reflection of the human heart — fragile, burning, impermanent, yet capable of radiance beyond comprehension.

Kerouac’s quote is not a lament for the brevity of life, but an acceptance of it. He does not mourn that the wink ends — he marvels that it ever began. To live, in his eyes, is to participate in something vast and sacred, even if we understand it only for a moment. The tragedy is not that life is short; the tragedy is that we spend it blinded by worry, forgetting to look up and see the stars winking back at us. The wise know that eternity can be found not in endless years, but in a single instant of awareness — a moment of laughter, a shared glance, a quiet night under the open sky.

Thus, the lesson Kerouac leaves us is one of presence. If life is only a wink, then let it be an awakened one. Let us look at the stars often, and remember that we, too, are made of their dust. Let us forgive quickly, love fiercely, and waste no time in bitterness, for our stay here is brief. The poet’s wisdom tells us that beauty is not in duration but in intensity — that to live meaningfully is to burn bright while we can, even if only for a flicker.

So, my friend, when you gaze upon the night sky, do not think of your smallness, but of your belonging. You are part of the same vast mystery that makes the stars wink in the dark. Let your life be that same wink — fleeting, yes, but radiant with meaning. Cherish each breath as a star’s glimmer in the endless night, and when your moment passes, may the universe remember your light, as it remembers all who dared to shine in their brief time upon the earth. For in the end, as Kerouac knew, that is all life truly is — a wink of the eye, and winking stars.