Looking Up

Look up on a clear night at the Marina and you might see stars. Look down and you might see a man and his telescope.
I have been going to the Marina every night lately and getting in a pretty decent run. Tonight I was going to make six miles. So much runs thorough my head during the day that it is so nice to just go and watch the seagulls scatter as I run by and let my mind wander.
Sometimes I see some amazing things - besides the seagulls.
One night there was a group of people swinging kerosene-dipped, flaming swords, poi balls and staffs through the air on the beach. I got a first-rate education in being a pyro. They even let me wield the staff!
Tonight there was a man with a massive telescope.
He was part of a non-profit astronomy education program and was just letting passersby look at stars light years away. So for the first time during my busy day, I looked up.
It was so cool. First he focused in on a cluster of stars that lie in the puffy outer limits of our galaxy. Then he swung the telescope around and zoomed in on clusters of stars in the swinging arms of the Milky Way.
As people gathered to look through the telescope, I couldn’t help but think about how long it had been since I had really stopped just to look at the stars.
He explained the various life cycles that stars can go through and why they appear to be certain colors. That star was about seven billion years old. This star was closer to the millions. Bigger stars have a shorter life cycle - just about a million years or so. They are the James Dean stars. They live fast and die young. Smaller stars live longer, like our sun. He also pointed to a tiny pin-prick of a star on the horizon that had just recently been certified as a new solar system.
As he pulled out a star chart that traced the path of a star system, he said “remember that we are just here for a moment in time. These guys have been here for billions of years.”
Throughout the past couple years, my life has spiraled into a whirlwind. Dull moments are few and far between and things seem to come and go so fast. In that moment I saw my recent past fly through my mind. The first time I walked into my very own apartment, jokes in the newsroom, tears at church, prayers that left my knees numb, Matthew and Ford’s giggles, awards and scrunched up noses from laughter were all just blips. It was there and it was gone.
The little astronomer on the Marina had a point.
I am so thankful for all the amazing things that this life holds for me, and for all the things that it will throw my way in the future. George Santana once said that “there is no cure for life or death but to enjoy the interval.”
Whether or not you find an astronomer on your daily runs, I would suggest looking up at the stars. They will be there for a while, but you wont. Carpe Diem!