Teaching High School: October

Embrace the Mystery

This week was harder with lots of bumps in the road and a pervasive feeling that the task is bigger than I anticipated. The resistance isn’t ready to yield just yet. Trust is not uniformly won. But the stars were breathtaking in the predawn sky this dry morning. I became acutely aware that the light reaching me from space took a journey of billions of years, and most humans will never see that view, a nightsky open to the cosmos, on account of dust and city lights blocking the light. We are stardust ourselves, matter and energy organized in such a way as to give each of us a few years to enjoy each other as humans on this Earth. Billions will never sense the insignificance of the tiny dustspeck of our planet within the vastness of a multitude of distant suns. Seize the day! Capture each opportunity for joy and love. Forgive the pain that was thrown at you by others. Embrace each pain even, as a miracle of sensation. We are something, even as we are nothing. We are stardust and we only have a moment. Embrace the mystery.

Written Oct 11, 2019 Lusby, MD