Shooting Stars and Living in the Present
What rewards are we missing by not living in the moment?
I remember the first time I actually understood constellations in the stars, particularly because as a whole it was an incredible moment. I was 19 and had been studying abroad in Florence. For Spring Break I was fortunate to visit my cousins in Geneva. They had a home right on the lake and we kayaked (!!) to a restaurant for dinner. Afterwards it was incredibly dark. I didn’t have a headlamp, so I was fully trusting in my hosts to bring us home. The skies were clear and the cool springtime air chilled my nose. All I heard were my paddles dipping in and out of the water and the stars shone so brightly that I had no choice but to look up at them. I recall seeing Orion’s Belt which is typically the constellation I most often see to this day, though at the time I thought it was the Big Dipper. As I paddled across the lake I was mesmerized. It clicked. These twinkling lights in the sky are wondrous - and maybe I should pay attention to them a little more.
Before that night, I hadn’t really spent much time looking at the stars. For some reason I didn’t consider craning my neck upward and taking a moment to enjoy the glimmers and majesty above me. It just wasn’t something I thought about, despite living on a farm outside of the city where there are often gorgeous skies to behold (something I’m incredibly grateful for now when I want some good stargazing). My lack of interest was probably due to all of the distractions I had. I would have much rather focused my eyes on a movie, a video game. Or perhaps, as a Taurus and an Enneagram 9, I was just craving comfort and coziness. I write this now from my couch with a blanket over my legs. Perhaps stargazing just didn’t meet my level of cozy.
In the past few years, I’ve enjoyed a growing interest in the stars, largely due to my husband who’s an astronomy enthusiast. On our honeymoon we went to Iceland and stayed in an igloo AirBnB behind a man’s house so we could stargaze from our bed (see: comfort!). A few years ago we spent a week in Bar Harbour and laid on picnic benches watching the skies for hours - the best stargazing I’ve experienced to-date. In my recent foray into stargazing, one of my favorite things I’ve learned is that shooting stars are not as rare as I had previously thought. I think the reason shooting stars are considered lucky is because you were lucky enough to find yourself actually looking at the sky, not because a meteoroid happened to be burning up in the atmosphere at that moment (what a shooting star is). If you spend any time looking at the sky on a clear night, there’s a strong likelihood you will see a shooting star - it’s just that most of us don’t take the time (or have the opportunity) to watch and wait.
This past Monday night we had clear skies. Thanks to Dave’s interest in astronomy, we learned there was a meetup happening along the Blue Ridge Parkway to observe, so we drove out. In the dark of the evening we could see the city illuminated, casting a halo around the mountain ridges. Above us we could faintly make out the Milky Way band along with a full sky of stars. As I watched the sky, my eyes jumping from light-to-light, I saw a total of four shooting stars in a 15-minute timeframe. All of this was because I let myself watch. I didn’t turn my attention away. I was fully in the present, absorbing everything I could in that moment.
I knew for this week I wanted to write about the rewards I feel like I’ve reaped from sitting and thinking, from working on these essays and pulling everything I’ve felt like I could from the unique present moment in which I’ve found myself. Then, thinking about my shooting star encounter, I realized that the night sky is a perfect representation of the rewards we can receive by living in the present.
But sitting with my thoughts isn’t something that comes easily. In fact, I struggled to get myself to think about how this essay would come together. It’s undeniable that the world is working against us when we attempt to really digest the feelings we’re feeling, the moments we’re experiencing, the content we’re consuming. It’s uncomfortable. I’d much rather continue the constant stream of dopamine that I find from scrolling Instagram or Reddit. I’ve even found the strange world of LinkedIn preferable to listening to the thoughts in my own head. It’s becoming easier and easier to keep the noise going and after learning about what Elon Musk is doing with Neuralink, it’s clear that there isn’t “progress” to be made in the quiet.
In the book Wherever You Go, There You Are - Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, writer Jon Kabat-Zinn encourages the reader to meditate on the thought that “This is it”. That there is nothing beyond the present moment. Nothing to gain, nothing to lose. All we have is now. Zinn says that, “when we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now.”
I can’t say I am the best ambassador for the present. I find it quite difficult, and I can count the amount of times I’ve truly meditated on two hands. I’m a dweller, a worrier, a dreamer. But holding myself accountable to publishing an essay every week for the past 7 weeks has been a great learning experience. It’s felt therapeutic in many ways, now that I have a bit more time to sit and type out my thoughts in the present moment. Even better, I spend additional time working through these thoughts in an attempt to shape them into what I hope will be a coherent essay. I like to think that this exercise has been a way to find more in the present moment than I had been discovering before.
A quote I’ve often come back to since college is “inspiration exists, it just has to find us working,” by Picasso. In the quote, I interpret “working” as being open to inspiration - whether it’s meditating in the present, allowing your fingers to flow across a keyboard, or sitting at the canvas with a paintbrush in hand. Like shooting stars, allowing myself to sit in the present - as uncomfortable as it may be - has led to quite a few sparks and discoveries. Perhaps Picasso was a stargazer, too.
What I’m loving this week:
Eat: Whenever we have guests visiting, I see it as an excuse to pick up some Hole Donuts and wonder why I don’t have them more often.
Drink: In getting into the Oktoberfest spirit, I enjoyed this Good Company Festbier from Burlington Beer Company this weekend.
Watch: Jury Duty. How has it taken me so long to watch this show? I haven’t laughed out loud this much to a show in a long time.
Listen: Earlier this week we saw the folk supergroup Mighty Poplar at the Grey Eagle and it was one of the most authentic, honest, fun shows I’ve been to in a while.
Read: Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I picked this up a few years ago and was reading through but hadn’t finished. Reflecting on the “This is it” meditation has made me want to pick it up again.
Wow, and thank you. So much good food for thought here. 🩷