The blood moon and my place in the world
This is an excerpt from my journal.
It is past midnight now. I got home from a long walk in the mountains. I do hike every evening or night with my dogs. When there is a full moon I also go for another round afterwards to enjoy the experience. There is something uncommon about walking under the moonlight. You can see more figures around you, yet it is still dark enough to keep you on high alert. Perhaps what I enjoy the most is to operate in this liminal space between tranquillity and the sense of fear humans naturally have for the indiscernible and, thus, the unpredictable. While in the mountains at night, you understand better that you are not in full control of the environment, yet to be there you must operate with full confidence in your abilities to cope with the challenges.
Living in the countryside outside a built up area requires situational awareness at all times. You cannot afford to not know what is happening around you, what your options are, and which are the ways you might act in the face of danger. When the wildfires were raging, for example, I knew which paths to take to flee to safety and to not run into other troubles. I also scouted the area to update my knowledge of the terrain. Similarly, I am prepared for floods: I pay attention to qualities such as the composition of the terrain and how muddy it gets after a regular rainfall. I also know where in those slopes water flows may form. It is how I can anticipate which paths are dangerous and which ones are more reliable.
Walking at night in the wilderness requires this level of alertness. You have to be calm and composed, peaceful within, else you are already starting from a position of disturbance, from a place where you are feeling constant distractions. Calmness of this sort does not lend itself to reveries and absentmindedness. It is of another kind altogether. You are poised to act. Perhaps it is like the disposition of the wolf while on the prowl. We are apex predators, after all, although acculturation can trick us into thinking that we have fully pacified and domesticated ourselves.
While atop the nearest peak, I bore witness to the lunar eclipse. It lasted several hours. There was a phase to it where the moon was fully covered by the earth’s shadow. Its surface then acquired a red shade. The colour was much more saturated than the warm yet subtle tints we observe when the moon is on line of the horizon. In the final phase of the eclipse, the reds gave way to desaturated yellows that faded into white. As the moon started to brighten again, it shone with an intense glow of light coming from its bottom left side. Within an hour or so, the familiar face of the full moon was on display. I then left the summit with a smile on my face, pondering the beauty of this world and the humility required to appreciate the little things.
I cannot fathom the extent of the cosmos. What I am aware of is its immanent orderliness. There is structure and pattern in phenomena making manifest underlying processes of reasonableness and of computation which themselves have order. It is orderly throughout. Even what we conventionally consider chaotic is not devoid of pattern. Nothing is. Not even when the cycle of transfiguration culminates in the disintegration of a form, its reintegration in the greater whole of fluctuating states, and ultimately its reconstitution into a more stable form.
There is no point in boasting of one’s putative greatness in the face of the cosmos. How can I think I am the smartest being around when there is reason in the very fabric of the world? This is intelligence that spans the most minuscule of objects all the way to the totality of life. What is my strength compared to the sheer forces that engender the blood moon, that make this earth what it is, and that have contributed to my making which will inevitably be followed by my undoing? Whatever I have is derivative, partial, and contingent. And whatever I invent is latent in the constitution of my immediate milieu, waiting to be discovered.
You are humble when you are aware of the magnitudes. Otherwise, you consider yourself the “real deal”. There are levels to this. When you are involved in sport, you know not to talk big because you have not broken any records yet nor have reached the pinnacle of athletic achievement. When you do science, you do not say much owning to the understanding that your knowledge is limited. This is circumstantial humility, as it depends on the interplay of factors that constitute the case. The sportsperson, the scientist, and every other expert can still be cocky in other ways.
People have a propensity to compare themselves to others. When we feel content with ourselves, we make favourable comparisons that flatter our status. When we loath who we are or have become, we seek to confirm our foregone conclusion by pointing out the prominent qualities in others. The mechanics of comparison work towards a new equilibrium in which we find our place in the ranking among our peers. It is not humility but powerlessness or cockiness, depending on the specifics.
The ultimate humility necessarily is spiritual, else rooted in the transcendent. It is the state of being we operate in when we submit to the authority of something superordinate to our presence and when we consider whatever good springs from it to be unassailable. Only when the foundations of our mode of living are godly are we unshakably humble. Everything else is precarious.
Names we use to describe the greater magnitudes are matters of convention. A Greek man may honour the Olympic tradition out of respect for the mythos that inspired his ancestors to pursue excellence. Another may feel that a different set of narratives is more appropriate. Fighting over symbols, metaphors, and artistic representations is a distraction, as is the effort to affirm those as true. We cannot hide from the gods. Our pretences are shallow, our ambitions misguided. What matters is to live in accordance with the world, which simply means to accept our place in the space, to outgrow the need for drawing comparisons to others, and to stop kissing up while punching down.
I am. It is not much. I feel empowered to tread the mountains alone under the light of the red moon. It is not much. This body remains fragile, no matter its tenacity. It is not much. I tend to my duties with unflinching commitment. It is not much. I shall one day cease to be. It is not much. Whatever happens, happens. I have long now accepted the workings of the cosmos both when they seem to give and when they appear to take. I go with the flow and cope with whatever circumstances as they occur. To what end? I can come up with clever justifications, but can never be certain. I thus choose to leave it open and to keep my attention focused on the nuances. Not because those are somehow more important. No, I cannot know as much. They just remind me of my own presence in the grand scheme of things. Every snapshot of the world is full of potential to keep us awestruck. Such is the consistency between the micro and the macro views. It is only a matter of recognising our surroundings.