Let the light shine down on me

 

Ever step outside on a clear evening to watch for shooting stars? Or even just gaze up at the sky?

I’m always fascinated by the amount of time the light takes to reach us. A bit mind-boggling to think that in some cases, we can be seeing light from an object in space that no longer exists. Poof. Gone. And yet for years to come, its will be making an appearance in the night sky.

(Really.)

Most sources list Proxima Centauri as the nearest known star to us. (I know, I should say excluding the sun, but you knew that so I didn’t.) Takes four years for its light to reach our planet.

You know the North Star? More officially it’s called Polaris. (Ready? Sit down.) Some sources say it takes six-hundred and eighty years for light from Polaris to reach earth. The War of the Roses began in 1455… Canterbury Tales from Chaucer, that’s usually marked around 1387… Henry VIII executed Anne Boleyn in 1536. The North Star you saw tonight? All of those things happened after the light you saw left Polaris.

William Shakespeare. Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo. All born after that light you spotted tonight began its journey from the North Star to your eyes.

There are sailors over the course of history that navigated the oceans using stars that sent off the information they needed to plot their location centuries before they were born. Imagine what you would say if I told you to get in the car and start your journey, because your great great great great (great great great, and I think great a few more times) grandchildren will be relying on your arrival in three hundred years to get them to safety.

It’s a little overwhelming.

People talk about grasping infinity, and honestly, I think that’s beyond all of us. People in general operate in a finite scenario. Beginnings and endings. To try and have a sane perspective on something that has no beginning, has no ending, all while traversing along on a planet that’s in the middle of an ongoing sea of ever-expanding depth, well, good luck.

On a summer evening, clear sky, they say you can sit back and gaze into infinity. And, that’s absolutely true. It’s not a static picture. It’s a view of constant motion that took millions of years to choreograph and assemble, with the starlight being just a part of it. Pieces of the show were begun long before any of us were even a possibility, and the show will continue for far longer than we’ll be around to witness.

But that beginning and ending part. That’s what we grasp. We step outside and we see stars. We see streaks of light cross the sky. It can be awesome. Harder though is to see it as more than that evening’s entertainment.

Every so often though, it does hit me to consider the source of the light. That it’s not just me. You can feel really large and inspired in these moments, and at the same time incredibly small and insignificant. And that’s ok.

Both are true.

It’s just a matter of navigating where you are.

 

If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail me at Bob@inmybackpack.com