On Tuesday night, I stayed up later than usual after dinner, wrapped up in a big blue blanket, lying on the picnic table at my campsite and looking up at the sky, watching for shooting stars. I saw four, then tiredness got the better of me and I headed into my little tent, to cozy up in my sleeping bag on the dirt ground.
At 3 AM my alarm went off. I got my big blue blanket and again wrapped myself in it and lay on the picnic table to watch for meteors. This time, I saw eight or nine of them before eventually forcing myself to go back to sleep.
The delight I felt in seeing the shooting stars was as pure and addictive as it was when I watched for shooting stars as a child or young adult back in Europe. It used to be ritual for us, for me, almost every year back then. Each and every meteor used to bring me that delight, maybe a dopamine rush, when I was younger: and it did just the same a couple days ago, the night between August 12th & 13th.
It was wonderful, lovely, to feel that delight again. Another moment of joy that, hopefully, I will remember and treasure and that might brighten up the dark moments that will inevitably present themselves again.
I wonder if I’d learn to take life — the experiences, the people, the events, the relationships that have punctuated my journey — just as a special night with shooting stars, if that could alleviate my pain for all my losses.
Maybe a few people in my life can really be like the moon or the sun or the stars that are always there, sometimes more visible, sometimes less, but nevertheless always present. But probably most people and most experiences, relationships or events are just like shooting stars, meteors, comets at most: present, bright and shiny and exciting for an instant, for a few seconds, and then gone.
Could I learn to just hold onto that delight of seeing, experiencing, and enjoying the brightness for an instant instead of trying to hold onto something that cannot stay?
The Little Prince and the Fox 