Just Venus and Me

jhaznaw
2 minutes ago
3 min read

I’m not sure what meaning you can derive from the following, but I feel like there’s something deeper here.

This morning, like most mornings, I set out for a short pre-dawn walk. I do this for several reasons: 1) I like the way it gets my body moving and energized for the day ahead; 2) It helps me collect my thoughts and hopefully puts me in a positive frame of mind, and 3) It often ignites ideas which I may or may not use in my work, my personal writing, or just to stow away as “safe-keeping” for when I need them.

This morning was ordinary. The temperature was cool and pleasant on my face; perfect “sweatshirt” weather. And when I left the house, the sky was just turning from its overnight blackness to a beautiful, deep ocean blue that indicates sunrise is not far behind.

As I turned east, I noticed a single light in the distance. It looked like a star, but brighter. From prior research (which consisted of a brief Google search months ago, confirmed by a friend who owns a telescope and has a passing knowledge of astronomy), I know that what I was seeing is Venus.

Now, you may already know (and you may also not care) about this, and that’s fine. And many, many mornings when I see Venus (after confirming that it’s not an early morning flight out of O’Hare or maybe Minneapolis, make no mistake, I have been fooled before), I think to myself, “Huh, there’s Venus. That’s cool,” or something equally unimpressive, especially for someone who fancies himself a wordsmith.

But this morning was different. This morning, when I saw Venus, it was the only thing visible in the deep, ocean-blue pre-dawn sky. The stars had already “disappeared” because it was too light to see them.

And at that moment, it seemed like there was nothing between me and that planet, which by my latest research (another quick Google search after I returned home), sits about 50 million miles away from where we are at this moment. Additionally, my research says that 50 million miles equals 8 light years, which means the light that made Venus visible to me had left the planet in 2017.

We live in a world where “wonder” has––in my opinion––become a thing of the past. (That’s my version of being old, crotchety guy sitting in the corner pining for the “old days.”) And this morning, I was part of the problem, finding out within seconds what I wanted to know about a neighboring planet without having to wonder, or speculate or go to an encyclopedia, or seek out an astronomy book at a library, or ask a professional.

Some call this immediacy “progress,” and I guess it is. After all, much of what progress has become focuses on convenience or immediacy with which we get results or reach certain outcomes. And admittedly, once I started looking for (and quickly finding) the answers to my questions about Venus, it did spark additional wonder about the planet, and the universe in general. So, I’m still on the fence about how I feel about all this.

Because I flip-flop between the beauty and fun of wondering about things and the satisfaction of having those same answers. And I realize that Google and Siri and all the other tools we have to immediately “know” things (song titles, metric conversions, driving routes, etc.) is the way of the world.

But man, it was so cool this morning when I made that right turn, and seeing that faraway planet, thinking, “There’s nothing else out here this morning but Venus and me.” And the amazement I had when I learned I could see something that’s 50,000,000 miles away, from light that’s been traveling 8 years just to reach my eyes.