by Craig Wiesner – San Mateo Daily Journal – April 15, 2024
An amazing thing happened last Monday, a total eclipse. For a short while, people in many places gathered and watched as the moon completely blocked the sun. My husband and I got to see the sun partially blocked from the Safeway parking lot and in front of our home later. My phone rang at Safeway, a customer hoping our store in San Carlos was open so he could dash in and get the eclipse glasses we had been selling. Way to wait for the last minute dude! After groceries and hanging outside our house for a while we headed in to watch people watching the eclipse on TV. CNN had crews in Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana and Niagara Falls NY.
The coverage, the eclipse and the people watching were wonderful. In Arkansas organizers had staged a mass wedding, with 300 couples getting hitched right before the eclipse, watching the eclipse together, and then dancing. In Texas CNN had their cameras at a zoo, where birds suddenly headed back to their nests as though it was night. In Indiana the parents of the reporter, both former NASA astronauts, shared their reactions of seeing the eclipse and comparing it to seeing planet earth from space, “beautiful.” At one point the anchors cut to a scientist to ask him to share some technical insights and what research was going on during the eclipse. Instead of talking about science he spoke about how incredibly moving the coverage was, how amazing it was to watch people begin to cheer as the eclipse became complete and then to listen to the hush as people stood in awe. Across the span of the many places where the eclipse could be experienced hundreds of thousands of people gathered and stood together, citizens of the planet earth, in awe of nature, space, our planet, the galaxy, each other, and yes, for many, God. What an incredible creation, however it became a reality. And through the power of television folks everywhere in the world could spend an hour or so watching their fellow humans pausing their lives to applaud and stand in awe of this incredible gift.
Knowing that our friends in New York had recently moved into an apartment with a spectacular view of the Hudson, we called them and watched together, sharing the minutes when the sun in New York became eclipsed by the moon.
Some might say that such moments are ones that should make us realize how small and insignificant we are. I see such moments differently, as ones that amplify how important each of us is, how enriching our relationships can be, and how each of us has so much to contribute. Think of each venue where CNN chose to be. Think of every single role people play at a place like the zoo, how interconnected they all are, from the person selling tickets to the specialists managing all the creatures to the maintenance people mending the fences to the cooks and servers at the cafe to the people cleaning up all the poop, every single one of them matters. No matter how much each person gets paid, where they were born, the color of their skin, how they present their gender, whom they love, what type of God, if any, they believe in, where they land politically, if at all, how old or young they are, each and every one of them contributes to keeping that zoo running and helping to provide moments of awe and joy to those who visit. And, the visitors are equally important, for without them there would be no zoo!
So, a rare thing happened last Monday. My question now is how can we make more moments like that happen, where we gather together in person or virtually, and applaud and stand in awe of something, and then maybe spend time talking about it, growing from it, enhancing or creating new relationships because of it? As our editor here at the Journal, our county, our Surgeon General, and other leaders have been telling us, we are suffering from a pandemic of loneliness which diminishes our health and our society.
My call to act is this. Look around, here in this newspaper, at the billboards around town, at signs taped up to store windows, on the library’s bulletin board, on web sites promoting things to do, and find one thing where people will gather and go. Find one thing that interests you where you will find others who share that same interest and go. Entertainment, education, service, exercise, meditation, are all awaiting you, some absolutely free, some at a small cost, but worth any penny. Don’t wait. Go out and find some awe and awesome people right now because the next eclipse won’t be viewable until 2026 in Greenland!