+Awesome. I wanna do something I've been wanting to do for a while now but wanted to expand it over a month or maybe more. Over the past couple weeks I've thought a lot about things that just make life great. Really great. They can be tiny or enormous but no matter what you know you love them. So, for the entire month of November I will be blogging about Just Plain Awesome Things. There's something about lists and such with me, I love them. So, enjoy!

Just Plain Awesome #1 : Actually Pointing Out A Constellation.

Living in the city, it's pretty rare to stare up at a dark sky full of sparkly stars between the streetlights and boring advertisement billboards. The light pollution pretty much prevents all us city slickers from experiencing the big open universe we live in. Now if you go camping or up to a friend’s cottage, then it's a different story. That’s when you zip open your tent or lie on the dock and just gaze up at the twinkly beauty above us all. It's quiet and peaceful and there's nothing but sky. We tilt our necks, drop our jaws, and wonder how big it is, how far it goes, and what the tentacled, saliva-covered aliens looking back at us are thinking. We sure do have a lot of questions about the universe but we don't know most of the answers. Or de we? It doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while somebody picks out a few bright stars and they point out a constellation way up there. Light years away, worlds apart, and sparkling for all eternity, if we get really lucky we hear some stories about bulls, belt buckles, and the personal business of many Greek Gods. Not as bad as a gossip magazine though thankfully. Of course, I can only ever see one thing up there myself: The Big Dipper aka 'The Wheelbarrow Thing' and I am pretty proud of that. It's not much but it's something. Sometimes I think I see other cool things but someone else tells me I'm looking at a plane, a blinking satellite or, occasionally, the moon. That's rare. But, there's always a tiny spark of luck on those star-gazing nights and that’s why when you actually point out a constellation in outer space you feel like a genius astro-cosmologist with a PhD in Good Eyesight. It's a lovely feeling. You’re no longer the dude responsible for finding marshmallow roasting sticks, grabbing bug spray from the tent, or dumping a pail of water onto the campfire before you head to bed. Nope, now you’re a worldly space explorer raising your eyebrows and pointing out the window as you all fly forward through the darkness. You've upgraded, leveled up and it's all about those tiny feelings of just being important or smart for a moment. A brief moment. The best kind of moments.

John-E
ps. Life is pretty wonderful right now ... just thought you should know.

Labels: Constellations, Just Plain Awesome Things, Opinion, Personal