Eclipse

Today was a cool day... obviously it was nice to have a 3 day weekend and, I will be honest, I wasn't sure how exciting the eclipse would be this afternoon.  But I was genuinely amazed!  It exceeded even my best hopes for what it would seem like.

I have been thinking a lot about why the eclipse today is standing out to me as such a significant event.  Yes, of course it was cool to see it get so dark out in the middle of a beautiful, sunny day.  Yes, it is interesting to think of the science and how small we are as you witness the moon making it's way across the sun.  But I think it is more than that.

Today, millions of people across the United States all stopped in what they were doing to look at the sky.  We jointly paused in what we were doing, in the busy rush of our days, to simply observe.  And so often when we are watching things in nature that are beyond our control we are doing so because it is something bad or scary - like when there are tornado warnings or hurricanes and we are all watching and preparing for something terrible.  But this was a reminder that things beyond our control in nature can be good too. In my neighborhood, spontaneous cheers erupted for the 2 minutes and 15 seconds of totality.   And then the moon kept moving and the daylight returned and I was left wondering how people had such amazing photos while I had just been sitting there in awe of it all.

My take away from today is that I am thankful for moments that we can all pause for something good and appreciate the beauty in the world around us.  The eclipse represented that for me.  I hope you have some good memories from today too and I look forward to hearing about it all this week.