Hidden Wonders

The other day I spent a few hours watching a dot move (very) slowly across a disk of light on a sheet of paper. I was on a street corner in downtown Milwaukee, with a changing cast of others who stopped to look at the same dot. While I was there it made it about one fifth of the way, a few others were there longer. No one was going to see go all the way, at least not in Milwaukee.

Doesn’t sound all that great, does it?

But I was watching the Venus Transit. This won’t happen again for 105 years, and it has been something like 130 years since the last one (not counting the 2004 transit – they happen in pairs). The Venus Transit has caused, in the past, massive excitement all over the world. Using a transit mankind worked out how far the sun was from the Earth, and from there how far everything else was. It is a dramatic, amazing thing that helped us see and understand the greater universe we live in.

But it was just a dot moving across a lighted disk.

Recently I traveled on a (small) motorcycle up to Alaska and then south to Chile. When I was actually on the road, it was like watching the dot. There wasn’t anything grand about it. Well, that isn’t true. I was aware of the adventure on a certain level. I was getting to see things and do stuff and meet people that altered the way I looked at the world around me. But it was just watching the dot. It wasn’t a big deal, on a certain level. A road trip writ large.

So, it was very much like the Venus Transit (although I hope my trips are more frequent). Which made me wonder about other things in life that might be the same way. Moments that are life-changing or mind-altering, that we are only vaguely aware of (or not aware of at all) at the time they happen. How many pass us by without our ever being aware of them at all. How many people driving through downtown saw us standing there looking at that dot and never even thought about what we were doing, or if they knew didn’t care enough to stop and share the moment.

I can’t blame them – it was just a dot. But it was also a lot more than that. Something they have now missed for the rest of their lives, unless medical science improves a lot anyway. They don’t know, they probably don’t even care. Most of them have already forgotten the little group they saw a week ago, outside looking at the sun.

I want to feel bad for them, to reach out and try and share some of the wonder in the world. But, really, it’s just a dot, and it’s not moving that fast, and if they don’t want to see everything that dot meant there isn’t much I can do to open their eyes. Eyes are funny like that.

I’m glad I was there though. Glad I took the time to watch the dot, even if that was all it was. Glad I took the time to see more of the world than local bars and coffee shops and even national monuments and parks. Our time here is limited, and the wonders we might see are not. I hope to keep seeing the wonders.