How Was The Eclipse For You? (& Why Astronomical Events Help Me Feel My True Place In The Universe)

I'm feeling jealous right now as my family, many of whom are in the path of totality, report on the magnificence of experiencing the total solar eclipse. I'm feeling some FOMO, since I was supposed to be in Maine, right smack dab in the best weather for the path- but circumstances beyond my control find me in the Bay Area, where we had a 34% eclipse at the peak.

We had the right glasses, so we got to watch the whole spectacle with zero clouds. My dog went wild and started whining and pawing at my leg right at the peak part of it. My housemate April and I listened to Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse Of The Heart and Nicki French's 1990's remake of the same.

But it's not totality. The sky stayed bright. The temperature never changed. And we only got to see a bite out of the sun with our eclipse glasses. So I'm jealous of those who got to see the sky darken, feel the temperature drop, hear the birds and animals change their behavior, witness the changing of the shadows, and watch the corona flickering.

It's on my bucket list to see a total solar eclipse in totality, so missing this chance is a strange feeling. I might not still be alive when the next one rolls around in the US twenty years from now. That's a sobering thought...and also a reality check of how brief our time in a body really is, given the grand scope of existence.

But even so, I feel the awe I feel around astronomical events. I'm that girl who gets up in the middle of the night to watch every blood moon lunar eclipse and drives into the middle of nowhere to get away from light pollution to watch meteor showers at the top of Mount Shasta or from the Lost Coast.

I always get the same feeling- that we are mere specks in the great cosmos, little dots of life in a vast universe of matter and dark matter and nothingness and everythingness. Not to devalue our own personal dramas or traumas in any way. But during eclipses and meteor showers, I somehow feel just a little less attached to my own miseries and little more separate from even my joys.

I feel- in the best way, and without religion- my real place in the world, my vast significance because I have a spark of the Divine in me and that makes me inherently worthy- and also my complete insignificance in the scope of All That Is. Astronomical events shatter any grandiosity I might harbor and also inflate me beyond any devastation to my real self esteem.

Somehow that awe eclipses the small things- or puts them into perspective, at least- but without making me feel like I don't matter at all. I feel God in those moments, if you will- the Creator that animates all things and doesn't discriminate between the value of any one creation over another. Those moments of awe are the Great Equalizer. I am as valuable as the sun and as value-less as an atom of dirt. I am All and I am No-thing.

That feeling never lasts. My way of being in the world goes back to my normal dramas and traumas and worries and wins. The personal dramas take over my consciousness again, I get attached to getting what I want and avoiding what I don't want again- and I get dragged down by the traumas of human existence, not just my personal traumas but the ones that are killing our species and other species and hurting our planet right now.

But some part of me never forgets how small I really am and how vast it is to be alive. Somehow, that makes coping with human life on Planet Earth a little easier to bear.

I also appreciate that astronomical events unite us. We are not divided by political ideology or misinformation. Maybe our former President watches eclipses without eclipse glasses and our current one dons glasses, but at least we don't generally debate whether the moon is coming between the earth and the sun today. We can appreciate it and feel awe together- Red, Blue, or anything in between.

And so I am basking in that postcoital eclipse energy right now- and just wanted to take a moment to connect with you all and hear how YOUR eclipse experience was. If you were in the path of totality, tell me everything, so I can vicariously enjoy the totality I missed.

*Photo credit Josh Reynolds

*I understand that some Indigenous peoples don't wish to see photos of eclipses, so if this wound up in your feed and you feel offended by it, my sincere apologies. In my cosmology, my sharing of the image is intended as a holy offering of gratitude and awe for moon, sun, and everything in between. I mean no disrespect.