Couldn’t sleep the other night. I tossed and turned, rehashing the insurmountable problem that is currently weighing on my shoulders. I played If, Then, made pro/con lists for my options. I catastrophized, imagining the worst possible outcomes. I worried, then tried to talk myself out of worrying, then worried some more. Every time I looked at the clock, I did the slumber math. If I fall asleep in the next 17 minutes, then I can get 4 hours of sleep. Slumber math never helps.
Finally, my mind wandered away from the insurmountable problem and I remembered the eclipse. One thing that really struck me was the infinitesimal odds of those two cosmic bodies aligning so perfectly. We exist in a cosmic time where the moon is the perfect distance to appear the same size as the sun and block it completely during an eclipse.
Slumber math might suck, but our eclipse math couldn’t be more perfect. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon (fun fact: Australia is actually wider than our moon). But the sun is also 400 times further away from Earth than the moon, so they appear to be the same size. At least right now. Every year, our moon slides a few inches away from our planet. In a million years, total eclipses will no longer exist.
Then, as it is wont to do, my brain circled back to worry. It occurred to me that the moon was a perfect metaphor for the insurmountable problem. The moon appears large enough to blot out all light and heat from our saving star, but it’s just an optical illusion.
Sometimes things appear bigger than they are. Big enough to eclipse everything else in our lives. Big enough to end all life as we know it.
But that’s just a trick of perspective, isn’t it? Maybe my limbic system has attributed more import to the insurmountable problem than it warrants. Maybe, with enough patience and hard work, the insurmountable problem might slowly drift out of my mental orbit. Leaving me to sigh with relief that the seemingly insurmountable problem was both currently valid but ultimately a tiny speck in the cosmos of my existence.
With a new perspective, I finally fell asleep.
