I don’t have to raise my eyes to know he’s there. I know. I have always known. Even if he is not passing through my horizon, I am aware he exists and we are always we. We are forever. We are elements of the cosmos. Like Saturn’s moons, Epimetheus and Janus, we are twin planets forever struggling against gravitation and velocity to swirl about each other in balance and serenity.

Spiraling around eternity, two celestial bodies, traveling the universe on defined paths that gravity dictates. And each time we pass, speed and direction dictate the outcome. Consider how we both enjoy our stable orbits around our shared sun. The cosmic devastation comes when we pass too close. When the universal laws dictate outcome. We can politely share this planetary system as long as you remain on your route and I remain in mine. Passing and never touching. Ignoring each other seems wise.

As we dined at that first meeting, this next performance began, and we exchanged this-life stories. The woman and the man agreeing to dance. The beings deciding to try this again. Can we enter a shared orbit this time? Twin planets spinning about each other and sharing a path around their light source. You in your orbit, me in mine. You in my horizon; me in your horizon. Can we not collide, leaving one of us a mere moon reflecting the sun’s light onto the other’s surface? Or will we crash and burn, both flung into the coldness of space, alone and injured? Or will the impact be so dramatic, we are both destroyed or become one indistinguishable rock without purpose or identity?

This is the state of matter in this universe. This is truth. The laws of physics dictate outcomes. Our universe formed because of the unlikely imbalance of matter over antimatter. A tiny portion of matter — about one particle per billion–survived to form the cosmos. The odds we survive, a peaceful pair, are as slight as the birth of life on Earth. Or the emergence of life on an exoplanet. The impossibility forces one to consider intelligent design, which grants the impossible possible.

Are angels on our side? How can we, two independent and powerful beings, find a stable orbit?

For a stable orbit binary planetary system, the parties need to be comparable in mass. If one is taking mass from the other, making demands for time and attention, demanding sacrifice from the other, balance is impossible. If one is hurling mass at the other, giving and giving time and attention, sacrifice and worship, balance is impossible. If one is harming the other’s pursuits, or one focuses solely on the other’s pursuits, balance is impossible. If one is unstable or minimizes his or her power, balance is impossible. If one is narcissistic and self-absorbed, balance is impossible. The objects will never fall into a shared orbit with these unbalanced conditions. Only equals can harmoniously share space.

Yet, the bodies also must remain close enough to synchronize into that binary. To fall into a perfect gravitational ballet. How to touch without destruction of self or the other is the question. Can we move closer, can we share dimension, can we inhabit a postage stamp of the vastness?

I have no interest in losing myself to merge with another person or become another’s satellite. To become a moon, no more. To reflect light on another’s surface while remaining cold and small. These are not ideal conditions. We see this across the human universe. She is quiet as she cares for the children and the home and he is the rockstar with the corner office. Or he suffers in the cold to earn to perpetuate the lifestyle her spa and luncheon world demands. She plays nice at his office parties. He suffers her criticism and feels everything he does is wrong. She closes her eyes as she lies on her back and suffers his pleasure. He begs for affection and touch as she asserts her headache. One sees a dark moon that no longer impresses and must seek new orbit. Couples in pain. Couples filing legal papers. Unfaithful couples in search of the desired balance. As in the heavens, these are the realities of relationships, the imbalance where one becomes the satellite around the others mass.

Other relationships result in one party flung into the vastness, alone. Rejected and cast away with a force mass and velocity dictate. The gravity of attraction defeated by significance and determination to go one’s own way leaves the other forced away. From a distance, you watch and you remember how a peaceful orbit was considered and denied. Did you fly away by choice or by dictate? What forces drove you into the darkness?

To merge into one body, one mass, seems at first an attractive result. We crash. You lose yourself; I lose myself. In the heavens, this finality is a norm. Yet, relationships where the self disappears are far from ideal. Without self, without passion for one’s trajectory, without one’s own ecosystem and atmosphere, what can truly be shared? Does a boulder share within itself? No. It becomes an indistinguishable mass unto itself. Merging creates a new body but destroys the ingredient parts.

I love you too much to suffer your disappearance.

I love myself too much to sacrifice all that I am.

Certain you share my sentiments, universal law informs that we have choices. Merge and lose autonomy, destruct and lose life, separate and lose love, or revolve intact and balanced around each other. I ask: This time, can we achieve the latter and enter a peaceful orbit? Can we spin around each other in balanced perfection without collision, absorption, destruction? I move towards you hard and fast, repelling you into the darkness. You tear layers from my crust, adding to your mass, disintegrating me and pulling me down. The tug to decide who will orbit whom. Who will survive requires one of us to die. That is the calculation.

As we slow and near, we battle with gravity’s pull. You chose destruction. I chose the darkness.

Yet, whether by intelligent design or by chemical and physical properties, balance is possible. The universe may contain twin planets orbiting in harmony. Rare and precious would be the beauty of that dance, the glory of that balance, reminding us that the unlikely is forever possible. First moments and mere days remind us that our connection, each moment, is worth the statistically likely collision ahead. Yet, when we draw closer, our speed through the vastness increases.

You accusing. Me defending. Me scrambling to please. You pulling away. You in your world, with its secrets and locks. Me denied the keys. Me with my lists and anxiety. Your gallant offers to help mocked. The devastation distorting our surfaces, cracks in our core, atmosphere drawn away, magma over our surfaces, suffocation and darkness and sulphur, is tolerable when a stable, magical orbit is desired and denied by the very properties of the stardust of which we are made.

You, a mass, trying to pull me into your surface so there is only you and I am debris and dust, a charming moon to look at when you dust off your telescope. Your work, your family, your kids, your friends, your hobbies, and demands to be independent. I’m bigger, you say. I will take from you, your surface and dust and earth, and I will grow and you will diminish and be my moon.

I, a mass, trying to pull you into my surface so there is only me and you are pretty rings of ice and rock around me, the dashing man on my arm to remain silent at polite functions. My work, my career, my kids, my interests, my friends, my demands for attention. I’m bigger, I say. I will come toward you and crash into you and crack you into little pieces to decorate my horizon.

Either end is an end for one or both. Or a distance neither of us wishes to suffer. Scientists say these galactic collisions restructure an entire solar system. Friends retreat and take sides. Children silenced and hiding. Tense family dinners. Do the heavenly bodies suffer such pain? Who is to say. With oxygen and carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, pain and joy, tenderness and anger, love and disgust, are indices of intelligent life. The heavenly bodies only suffer sulphur and iron. A dead solar system will never match the loss of a failed intimate relationship.

The glory of a solar system, however, rivals the majesty of a power couple.

The laws of physics are not only in the stars. No differentiation exists between the cosmos and the human condition. The rules apply across all. As between two planets who share that magic orbit, we two must find a balance in mass, velocity, and distance. To find that shared perfection. To exist, beautiful and perfect.

In this moment, in this universe, among the stars, I realize we, you and me, are the intelligent designers, and we bear the burden to create balance.