Eclipse or Bust!

“So, then I went outside,” I said, my voice raising slightly.  “Do you know what I found?”

“No,” the other man said to me.  “What?”

“It was dark!  Really dark,” I said with finality – one would almost say with totality.

“Did this happen during the last eclipse?”  The other man was trying to figure out what the point of this story was.

“No, this was last night about 10 pm,” I said.  “I was just practicing up my darkness skills for the eclipse.”

The other man just rolled his eyes.  Clearly, I wasn’t taking this whole eclipse thing seriously enough.

Maybe it is just that I must work on Monday, but I don’t see viewing an eclipse in totality as a huge deal.  Every night, the sun goes on the other side of the earth, and it gets dark – really dark.  It is almost as though the people in Australia are creating an eclipse for those of us who live in Virginia.

Even more than that, if you like the dark, putting a paper bag over you head works really well and is much less costly than spending the money for gas to drive to somewhere in Ohio or Indiana where you can see the moon cross in front of the sun for 15 minutes.

I suppose the big thing that makes an eclipse stand out as something wonderful is its infrequent nature.  The last big solar eclipse in the eastern United States was in 2017.

Of course, just because something is unusual doesn’t make it worth seeing.  I do not remember my younger son eating tomatoes without complaining.  We still have not had television crews show up at our house on the off chance that our next supper meal will have this once in a lifetime occurrence.

I suppose that many of the people pursuing totality of eclipse will find what they seek – a deep twilight for fifteen minutes, the temperature will get a little cooler over that time, and then they will fight dense traffic for several hours.  I’m sure it will be memorable and special.

I am still afraid that we pursue the unusual and miss the beauty that is around us every day.  Ecclesiastes says, “He hath made everything beautiful in His time…” 

For all my grumbling about the eclipse, I might go to see it if I had a chance, but I would not give up my vision to see the beauty around me.  I sincerely believe that that beauty is easier to see on days when the moon doesn’t block the sun’s light.