If you had known you wouldn't see it--that the clouds would
stand in your way--would you have still instructed your alarm to wake you a
solid two and a half hours earlier than usual?
If you had known the moon would sit, hiding, behind the very
edge of the cloud cover--clear sky just to the right--you only need it to move
a couple more inches (well, inches from your angle and perspective down below
here on planet earth--who knows the actual distance up there, up above the
world so high....)--but if you had known, would you have tried to barter another
hour of sleep from the wee hours of the morning?
It's two minutes past the time your internet source
projected the supermoon lunar eclipse would conclude, yet you still lift your eyes, imploring the spot
where you think the moon still sits to clear, knowing it won't, yet still hoping somehow it will.
But now you've missed it and it won't happen again for another 18
years. (What will happen in those 18 years....you don't wish the time away,
aren't eager to hurry up and miss it again, but still you wonder....). Are you terribly disappointed?
No.
You hear their voices rising from the kitchen, signaling the
day is starting. But you wait up here, wanting to hold on to the quiet--well,
as quiet as the early morning dawn can be with the cacophony of crickets,
waking birds, mewling cats, distant cars, rumbling trash pick ups, and shushing
wind can be.
You lift your eyes at least a dozen more times. But that
cloud isn't budging.
A couple years ago, you received an assignment in your
American Lit class to go out, be like Thoreau, and "live deliberately". You tried your best to do just that for
that particular assignment, and found a sort of peace and purpose in rising to greet the
sun. (Though it was cloudy that morning, too, now that I think about
it...). But anyway, you've kept it in the back of your mind since, a worthy goal, something
to strive toward, but something that isn't always easy to live out day to day.
You even wrote about it in one of the essays that brought you to this rooftop
porch in Greece, and hoped it might prove a quiet, thrumming anthem for your
adventures.
You look up now and are startled to see that the moon is in
the sky, though nowhere near where you thought it was, where your eyes have
been boring a hole in the sky, searching. Has it been sitting there this whole
time only to be missed because you were looking in the wrong spot? You'd like
to think that that particular spot has been covered with clouds, too, and only
just come into view. Maybe it has. Does it really matter if it was?
The point is, living deliberately doesn't mean you will
always see the supermoon lunar eclipse. Sometimes, even with the best of
intentions to do something, see something fantastic--you still might end up
facing some clouds (either literally or metaphorically...). But that doesn't
mean you shouldn't wake up and rise to greet the day or the challenges or
whatever you want to face.
Because you still might find something you weren't looking
for, something you would have missed looking for the moon or sleeping till noon.
I didn't see the total eclipse like I thought. But now, here I am, awake and
ready for a new day, a new week, a new month here in Greece. I got to spend
some time in quiet, up here with a friend, then up here in solitude, with a
peace only God can bring. I made an omelet, which is the first I've attempted
since being here that hasn't turned into scrambled eggs on the first flip, and
which hardly ever happens in the morning as it is, and especially not on a weekday
morning. And I got to spend some time in quiet reflection, writing this,
finding purpose in an early morning, discovering anew what it means to truly
live deliberately.
And now, in these last few moments before I need to start
getting ready for school, at the time I would normally be waking up sleepily
and begrudgingly to my alarm nowhere near ready to greet the day, I look up
and I don't see the moon anymore (it's sleeping behind the clouds). But that's
ok. I'm not seeking it anymore. Instead, I look up and see the changing sky as
dawn approaches with her rosy fingers. The black night fades to blue and the
ghost grey clouds take on a muted pink hue.
I look up and know, with the sound of chirping crickets to
my left, twittering birds just waking up surrounding, a growing hum of rumbling
cars in the distance signaling the work day is nigh approaching, and the
creaking from the house at my back telling me my housemates are waking up, too. I know there is a purpose in rising so early. There is a
purpose in me being here.
And I know in this moment what it means to live
deliberately. And though I know I can't hold onto this moment much longer, I
feel and echo now the call to seek out more such moments.
Live deliberately.
