Beautiful Day
When actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk) recently went to space, he said it was his lifelong dream to go to experience life beyond the Earth. However, he described feeling an existential emptiness (and death) as he looked out in the vastness of space. In his memoir “Boldly Go” (2022), he said that he turned to the earth to see life. He was engulfed in an intense grief as he thought about how life is taken for granted.
I have these existential discussions with clients, and recently on a jog, I began thinking about the vastness of space. I sometimes read articles about the James Webb Space telescope (or the Kepler telescope) finding the potential for life millions of light years away. We observe thousands of planets, and we’re yet to find life outside of the Earth! This can be an overwhelming thought!
As I jogged (with my thoughts literally in space), the song, “Beautiful Day” by U2 began to play. My attention was drawn to the music, and I found myself more present on the run again. “It’s a beautiful day. Sky falls, you feel like.” I noticed the trees, the birds, and the sun’s orange glare from the lake. It really was a beautiful day… As I looked up at the clouds in the sky, I felt an overwhelming appreciation for life. Think about this. Even though we can see millions of miles into space, we are unique. Life has amazingly existed on Earth for billions of years, and we’ve been here for a couple thousand of those. “It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.”
As I continued to jog on this hot September morning, I felt gratitude for experiencing the gift of another day. In that moment, I wasn’t frustrated that the hot temperature made my run difficult. Instead, I felt thankful to experience the weather at all! In fact, I felt quite in awe of the weather. Just think about how the sun (a star 93 million miles away) pulls the Earth into a consistent orbit, and how the atmosphere of our planet protects life from that vast space and creates our weather patterns! And yet, to me, it’s simply a hot morning for a run. We may only be a spec in the universe, but we’re a pretty awesome spec!! “What you don’t have, you don’t need it now. What you don’t know, you can feel it somehow.”
How often do you wake up, step outside, and just thank God for this day? There are difficult days we when don’t feel very thankful at all, but perhaps this is not one of those days. Perhaps today can be a day of appreciation for life, for friendships, for a job, and even for hot days. If we don’t feel those things today, then maybe just be thankful for U2... “It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.”
