breathless

A friend came into my office yesterday and was telling me how she was lamenting that she hadn’t seen any of the current meteor shower. She had just moved into my area, which is very dark (and we are at an elevation of 7000 feet), and has huge windows in her house. She has been watching the night sky to see a “shooting star” and hadn’t seen one. She said that her husband had been delighted by the view that they had and had seen quite a few.

Then, while in bed, she watched out the window and the night sky lit up with a meteor. She said she was excited by it. Her entire face lit up and it made me smile.

It’s the small things, isn’t it? Those beautiful nothings we can’t control that surprise the heck out of us.

I love those moments. They come out of nowhere and take my breath away.

And I got one of those this morning.

I was driving to work, thinking about what is on my agenda this morning and listening to NPR. Here I was listening to a report about the pervasive poisonings that the KGB has done throughout the history of that organization. This led me to think about the space race between the US and Russia in the past and how we are now more global in how we go into space (or seemingly so, anyway — more collaborative, anyway).

Then…shooting across the sky, my very own shooting star.

It literally took my breath away.

A blip.

That made me smile and think about how amazing this earth is around us and how fortunate we are to be able to see things like that.

A beautiful nothing blip that took my breath away.