Planets or Shooting Stars?
Everything I know about astronomy will be reflected in this newsletter. This assures that your reading time will be short. I learned as a kid that planets followed in orbits around the sun while shooting stars (meteors burning up in the atmosphere) sparkle brightly for brief moments and are quickly extinguished.
It occurred to me that the people of our lives fall into one of those two categories. The planets of our lives are the most significant and permanent individuals. They are our family members and perhaps a few very close, dear friends. The shooting stars of our experience are former classmates, co-workers and neighbors. Former partners or paramours may fall into this grouping. They played an important role at the time, but life’s circumstances moved them out of our experiences eventually. Any examination of a high school yearbook or wedding album will remind us of those men and women. Their images from those publications generate flashbacks for all of us.
But the planets of our lives are more important. As we know, as planets orbit the sun, their proximity to Earth waxes and wanes. We become closer to Mars, then move away from it. Mercury becomes visible for a time, then moves beyond our vision. Even an astrological neophyte like this author understands this.
Similarly, the planets of our lives go through periods in which they are psychologically and emotionally close to us, only to move away, much to our puzzlement and consternation. This phenomenon is particularly true with our children. Little ones who doted on our attention seem disinterested or peeved by us as they hurtle toward puberty. This period of alienation (commonly referred to as adolescence) seems to suggest that planets are, in fact, meteors.
But they are not.
Children, like planets, orbit back to us as they move into the maturity of their adult years. As long as we are “searching the sky” for their return, they will move back into our lives. Close friends are always there for us, even as our separate trajectories distance them from us. They are, nevertheless, accessible when needed.
While our understanding of the cosmos may be limited, the love and concern of our family and close friends can approach the infinite. That fact should be a source of comfort and relief for all of us.