Why Look Up?

I am certainly not alone in my fascination with the cosmos.  I am just one of millions who are drawn to looking up.  I study the stars, but not to retain it for further recitation.  I do it for the sense of perspective I get about life.  Thinking about Regulus, let’s say, wildly spinning with its coronal blue jets of flame, takes me out of this world of sorrow. This world is filled with such sorrow, most of it fueled by testosterone as evidenced by war, the power hungry, and the brutality seen in many sports or in rape or domestic abuse.  The desire to escape a testosterone-free world draws me to other worlds.  

There is an incredible irony to this, however, because space is an even more hostile and annihilating world.  Yet looking up from a safe space connects me to the enlightened “eyes” of the past: the Greeks, Thales, Hypatia, et al,  as well as ground-breaking European astronomers like Galileo, Brahe, and the Herschels.  I marvel at what they saw, discovered, surmized, and made “real” for us.  Gazing turns to introspection in that much of the light we see was extinguished millions of years ago.  It is fascinating how a thought -- often born from the senses -- becomes a reality and that reality is nothing more than an illusion.  The afterglow of a long-dead star is a powerful metaphor for this.  Star gazing is just another way to help me make sense of the senselessness of this world.