That's not the moon.
The study of impermanence both demands and cultivates a steady mind. You would wish some of that learned gravity on our shrill leaders, whose gaming is driven at least in part by their fluttering avoidance of mortality, a blindness adopted to ward away their own short time upon the planet.
Politician or citizen, this week we are offered a lesson in humility. Not two weeks ago, observers in one of the world’s scientific groups detected a small asteroid far out of the normal plane of heavenly bodies, whose orbit around the sun carried it in the direction of the Earth. You might imagine the observer who first detected it:
-- Hey, John, look at this. Can hardly make it out.
-- Yeah, that’s a space rock all right. Let’s track it for a day or two… I’ll send out a sighting memo.
Those two days pass. Other observatories pick up the object and triangulate in on it. Images are gathered: tick… tick… tick. Now imagine the first person to plot its trajectory. A well-known prickling goes up the back of her spine, and her mouth goes suddenly dry.
-- Holy shit, she says, intending it to be under her breath, and unaware that she said it out loud.
She thinks: I’d better measure this again. There’s the moment when we each realize that an end exists. Measure it again. Damn, that is close. Every other lab is having the same thought, and going through the same exercise.
-- Okay. How big is it? Can we tell? What’s the margin of error? What kind of damage are we talking here?
I wonder how many of those scientists have watched von Trier’s Melancholia – certainly some, perhaps many. The object isn’t large: between 300 to 600 meters across. But it is traveling very, very fast. It will come very, very close to the Earth.
-- Continental damage.
-- All right, we place it outside the orbit of the moon. And it’s too fast and too late to do anything about it anyway.
-- What is the margin of error? Okay. Okay. I think we’re okay.
-- But let’s keep watching.
Several days pass, and every day those that are feverishly re-plotting trajectories re-plot them again. More data means more accuracy. More data means better planning. More data means…
“That’s not the moon up there.”
More data matters, I suppose, but is ultimately unimportant. I will and you will pass from this beautiful and sometimes torturous arc through life. The little North American nation-state that Republicans are so keen on owning, and Democrats are so keen on securing, and the 1% are so keen on buying, is an eyelash in God’s eye, a thorn in so many other nations’ sides (unpopular, but true: as is China, or Russia, or any other power bloc), and as non-vital a construction in the grand scheme of things as a Stonehenge menhir.
While fervently hoping the observers of TB145 are solid in their orbital math, I nevertheless embrace this opportunity to practice wide-open eyes, using every chance to remember Tomorrow may not exist, and Someday certainly will not: with practice, with faith, we can remember our neuroses as passing clouds, our loves as bedrock, and the Earth (and not its spoils) as what is truly essential.
Strengthen your mind and your awareness. Following this humble Way, your actions become less and less aggressive, and more and more compassionate, affecting every interaction throughout your day. Better than the shriek of a typhoon, or a collision of astronomic proportion (which will one day occur), is the smile of wisdom you yourself cultivate, carefully pluck, and generously offer.