Under the Moon

I woke up at 1:00 in the morning, blinded by the brightness in my bedroom window. I had to squint my eyes against its ashy luminescence. The moon was shining brighter than I could remember, bright enough to wake me from my sleep. I actually had to roll over in bed to shade myself from the moon’s glow. I wasn’t annoyed it had caused me to wake up. I was pretty impressed by it. Usually I’d be quite aggravated for waking up at 1:00 in the morning for no reason. But the moon waking me up just didn’t seem so bad.

I took a second to look around my room basked in moonlight and was humbled. I know the moon’s surface is covered with a reflective dust called regolith and that dust merely reflects the light produced by the sun. But it’s still pretty awe inspiring. It’s no wonder early man looked up at the moon with such reverence. I was very impressed. It reminded me not to take the little things for granted so much and to appreciate the simplest of experiences.

For instance, as I was riding the train into work this morning I happened to notice the wind blowing through some tall grass near the train tracks. The grass was swirling and bending in the morning breeze as the sunlight rippled off its green façade. I realized at that moment that it had been a long winter and even longer since I saw grass being blown about by a strong wind.  Once again I felt somewhat small and inconsequential. But not in a way that made me feel bad; I felt like part of the greater picture. And I was okay with that.

That of course got me thinking about all the people rushing about in the train station and on the city streets and then of the estimated 6,852,472,823 other people on this planet. All with their own lives, dreams, hopes, cares, wants and passions. It’s almost impossible to imagine all of us on this one planet, all doing our own things. It really is amazing. I wondered how many of those people were woken up last night by how bright the moon was and how many are still thinking about it today.  How many looked up with wonder and amazement and thought, “I hope someone blogs about this tomorrow”?

It was an experience I’ll treasure for a while, well, for as long as I’m able to remember it. These things sometimes tend to fade into the background of life as we get bogged down with all the other wants, needs and the passions of others. Hopefully, at a moment of stress and conflict I will remember of how the moon woke me up and all the things that get me down can be washed away after bathing in moonlight. 

Of course I know the simple poetry of bathing in moonlight is pretty cheesy, but it was the best close I could think of for this piece. But when I re-read it, I hated it. Maybe it's more important to remember life under the moon goes on and unlike the moon's forced orbit around the Earth, we can effect change in our own lives and the lives of others. So maybe we have to be careful with each other's hearts and heads, I think that works better than a mythical moon bath.