A tiny love letter to eclipse season

The dictionary defines an eclipse as obscuring the light from one celestial body by the passage of another between it and the observer or between it and its source of illumination.

The second definition is a loss of significance, power, or prominence in relation to another person or thing.

Without researching what every internet expert believes these next few eclipses will bring to the surface, I just thought about those definitions and what they mean in my life.

I could not feel less like a celestial body these days, and I’m not sure I have much light in me, but I can relate to feeling obscured, a little insignificant, and distant from a source of illumination.

So here goes:

• Who or what obscures my light?
• What forces me to be witnessed in my shadow state?
• How do these shadows shape and define me?
• How do they shift based on the angle and intensity of the light coming toward me?
• Where does my power exist?
• How is it defined in relation to people, places, and things?
• What could ever dim its significance?
• How often do I confuse temporary people, places, and things that cast shadows as they pass through my life with something permanent?
• Who or what forces me to tell the truth about who I am at my core?

Ram Dass said, “We are all just walking each other home.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment that is difficult to incorporate into our daily lives when interactions feel less like celestial bodies passing by one another and more like car crashes.

But maybe that’s the practice.

Remembering flaws.

Remembering divinity.

Remembering humanity.

Remembering impermanence.

Remembering that light and darkness have a long-term, monogamous relationship that I can never get between. And that they have learned to balance, coexist, reconcile, and use each other's best and worst qualities for the purpose of illumination.