Just walked back into the house brushing ants and dog hair off my clothes because I didn’t plan well enough for lying on my back to take photos of the eclipse. I did think enough ahead of time to find a flat space to hold my camera straight up without getting a crick in my neck but didn’t have enough sense to bring a blanket with me or leave the dogs in the house. Still, it was kind of cool to see the pups suddenly settle down when the sky got dark. Apparently they didn’t think it was the Rapture either so they just momentarily chilled out.
It got me thinking though about how nice it is, however infrequently, when we humans experience something we all enjoy or at least seem to agree on. Sure, many went about their day today without giving the cosmos a second thought. Others live far away from the path of totality and have been blissfully free from daily updates about retinal blindness and emergency planning for the past month. Then there is my mom, who lives on the east coast and happened to call me on another topic. When I told her what I was up to today she responded, “There’s an eclipse? I thought that was last night.”
Before you ask — no, my mom is not AOC, she’s just old, has a new boyfriend, and doesn’t think or talk about anything else these days. But that’s a whole other Poppy column you don’t want to read.
Back to lighter thoughts, I can only remember a few times in recent history that the news cycle was ablaze with an ultra compelling story that no one was conflicted about or debating in my doom scroll. The sad death of Betty White for instance. Everyone loved her, four living generations of television viewers appreciated her in prime time shows that were popular in their own decade, and she rescued animals for most of her life. The only thing people complained about that week was that she was three weeks away from her 100th birthday. Good job, Humans.
I think we can all agree that watching Kaitlin Clark, likely the only female basketball player most of us can name, was a joy. Not just because she is a GOAT, but because she is classy in so many ways. Everyone is celebrating her these days and to paraphrase USC Coach Dawn Staley, she has carried the weight for and elevated her sport for some time. Everyone loves her otherworldly athleticism.
But the universality of the eclipse was something even beyond Betty and Kaitlin. It provided free admission for an estimated 50 million people who all had a front row seat just by looking up. Thousands of photos, which began popping up on the Internet early in the morning showed scenes from all over that looked like modern day Norman Rockwell portraits. There were people wearing special outfits, with painted faces and whimsical eye protection, from all walks of life, standing shoulder to shoulder with eager and smiling faces uplifted.
From the sides of roads to midfield in professional sports arenas, everyone had a good seat when the moon did the ultimate photobomb.
Still, what I really loved was the idea that normally we are all so obsessed about daily duties and things that, in the grand scheme, are just things to get us to the next day. We panic over elections, fixate on fightin’ words on social media, and devote so much of our attention to keeping our homes, cars, gardens, and pantries just so. Yes, those last things are necessary but an overfocus on them means we regularly fail to look up and ponder how insignificant our little rock hanging in space really is.
It was a great moment of connection for those 50 million families, CEOs, first responders, bikers, politicians, and everyone else…all stopping in their tracks to look at each other, even for a moment, then marvel at the amazing preciseness of an indecipherably broad universe. Perhaps some of those people were thinking about Psalm 8:4, asking, “What is man that you are mindful of him?”
Imagine how different things could be could be if we all carried that humility vibe with us every day. Life isn’t just about what we think we’re achieving with our mundane tasks. It’s about something— or Someone—way beyond our little bubble. He kicked off this whole show with a word, and here we are, just passengers for a time on a little rock.
It was a great four minutes wasn’t it?