“The world is indeed full of danger, and many dark places in it, but there is still much that is decent, and though now in every land love mingles with sorrow, it may grow still more.” ~JRR Tolkien
It was my son’s fifteenth birthday. The basketball game was canceled, so my wife, son, and I climbed back into the car a little disappointed and headed home.
We were just heading back to the house, as we always do after the games. My wife was mid-sentence when something caught my eye before she could finish. There was an orange light in the sky.
I hardly said anything. It looked like it might be a plane and I didn’t want to interrupt. But there was something else.
It didn’t blink. It didn’t move like airplanes do. And then it began to leave a streak, a long, flaming trail that burned across the dark sky.
I said, “Hey, what’s that?” and all three of us looked up through the windshield at the same moment. It moved across the sky for a few seconds, then got smaller and disappeared.
We took out our phones and found what we already suspected. Probably a meteor, maybe a fireball. We guessed as much.
But knowing the word didn’t change how we felt when we looked across the sky. As we all fell silent at the same moment, as if something within us recognized it before our minds recognized it.
Science can tell you what that thing is. He can’t tell you why he finds you when he does. We drove the rest of the way mostly in silence, this streak of light still playing in our minds.
We got home, lit the candles and cut the cake. After our son put out the flames and made a wish, I wondered what he was hoping for as my wife pulled out old photos. One minute we were eating, and the next we were passing the phone around the table and looking at pictures we hadn’t seen in years.
There was my son at four years old, round-faced, grinning at something off-camera. We were on the beach and we were all squinting at the sun. We laughed about our hairstyles and the bathing suits we thought were cool at the time.
But underneath the laughter was something else, something that took our breath away and left us a little lost. We tried to ward off that feeling by saying, “Look how small you were” and “I can’t believe it was so long ago.” We just sat there for a moment without saying anything and we were all looking at the same picture and feeling the same.
How did we get here so fast? Where did all this time go? You look around at the people you love and the only thing you really want behind all the wishes and candles is for everyone to have a good time.
But none of us knows what the future holds, and sitting there with cake on our plate and a meteor still fresh in our memories, I felt the pain of that truth more than usual.
Since then, I have been sitting with the questions since evening. Did that orange flash make sense? Did the universe offer us something or is it just a coincidence?
I don’t know. And I kind of made peace with not knowing. I know that beauty is everywhere if we pay even a little attention.
Seeing a meteor with your family is something that makes you stop and wonder what else might be out there. These moments don’t announce themselves or ask for permission. They just appear out of nowhere, right in the middle of the journey home.
But by the same token, you can hear on the news that people have been killed in a far away or not so far away place. He can see an old man sitting alone at a table in the lighted window as he walks past and wonders who he misses. Somewhere inside you can hold someone you love and know you won’t always be able to.
The same magical world that offers blazing light in the sky also carries inexplicable suffering, sometimes within an hour, sometimes within the same mile. I consider this part to be the most difficult, but the most necessary to keep. Life is wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Most of us are never taught how to carry one. We are taught to fix things, to look for silver linings, to move forward. But some things just demand recognition.
The meteor was there, whole, bright and burning through the darkness, whether we understood it or not. The brokenness of the world was also there. Both were true on the same night under the same sky.
I don’t think we need to resolve this tension so much as learn to live with it. To let beauty be beautiful without the need to suppress pain. To let grief be present without absorbing the light.
This is not a solution. This is something more demanding than the solution. It’s a practice and some days are harder than others.
But I think the only way to live your own life to the fullest is to go home after a night that didn’t go the way you hoped, look up and see what’s there.
My son turned another year older the night we saw the meteor cross the sky. We didn’t plan it, and we didn’t pay attention to it. We were on our way home from a canceled basketball game and something amazing arrived.
I don’t know if it meant anything. But I know he was there and I know we saw it together. And I know that the same world that can break your heart can also set the sky on fire.
About Daniel H. Shapiro
Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is the keynote speaker, author and mentor. He is passionate about human relationships and the stories we carry with us. To learn more about his book, 5 Practices of a Caring Mentoror about your mentoring and speaking services, check it out yourinherentgoodness.com.
