When I was a kid, we had a book, The Universe, from the Time Life series. I think one of my parents received it at a school prize-giving. By the time I was reading it, it must have been nearly 20 years old, and there would have been many more discoveries in physics, and advances in astrophotography. However dated it might have been, it was still captivating. The information was fascinating, and the pictures of galaxies, nebulae, and the planets were eerie but stunningly beautiful. For a while, in primary school, when people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I answered that I would be an astrophysicist.
I think this book might also have triggered one of my early experiences of anxiety, as I lay awake for hours worrying about being sucked into a black hole or hit by an asteroid, and how could the universe (or anything) stretch to infinity, but if it didn’t, WHAT WAS AFTER THAT?
Surprisingly, the vastness of space has now become a source of calm for me. If you can see through a gap in the space junk hurtling around the planet, you can catch glimpses of light shining from millions of years before we started messing things up hear on earth. That’s strangely comforting.
In the early days of the Covid pandemic, my family asked if the global situation was increasing my (already severe) anxiety. Actually, no – it just changed some of the subject matter for a while. It was also weirdly comforting not being alone in my anxiety for a while. Lots of people around me were also feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty and alarm. I know for some people that has remained high, but many seem to have settled into the new normal without a constant sense of impending doom.
Early in the pandemic people were panic buying flour, long life milk, and toilet paper. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare, and product limits were put in. It was the first time I have felt anxiety about being able to provide our children with what they needed. Our youngest has allergies, and was going through about half a box of soy milk each day for drinks and cereal, when suddenly supermarkets said you could only buy one carton of plant based milk. Not one of each (almond, soy, different brands) just one, total. I know there are many people who face this worry all the time, and gosh, it was hard enough just experiencing this partially and briefly.
We mostly tried to resist the urge to panic buy masses of food or toilet paper. Right before the country went into the first lockdown, my panic purchase was a telescope. I imagined we would be stuck at home with nothing to do, and this new hobby would keep me busy and happy. It was second hand, in a different part of the country, but my parents were travelling that way for an urgent medical specialist appointment. So, hours before we went into lockdown, my partner drove up to meet my parents, and collected the telescope, plus a few boxes of soy milk my parents had in their pantry for when we visit. We measured our son a small amount of soy milk each day, and that was all he was allowed. Not quite as much as the dietitian had recommended to meet his daily needs, but we didn’t run out completely.
As for the telescope, lockdown was not a great time for me to learn a new hobby. Work was busy and more stressful than ever with the extra challenges of two parents and two children trying to do work and school from home, fighting over devices… plus the emotional toll of responding to the crisis of other families in the midst of work/life/home boundaries being eroded, with no colleagues around me for an informal debrief. There was no energy left by the time the stars came out.
That particular phase of the pandemic passed, and since then I have had a chance to get out my new toys a few times. Sometimes I’m frustrated with my clumsiness and end up cursing as the planets I am hoping to observe disappear behind the horizon, but there are moments when it all comes together. The first time I saw Saturn was incredible. It was small and a bit fuzzy, but there it was, spinning in space with its glorious rings, undoubtably the same planet that I had marveled at in pictures all those years ago. Recently we spent a weekend in a part of the region with darker skies, and I was able to find the Sombrero Galaxy. Faint and fuzzy, easier to see on the periphery rather than looking directly, but clearly identifiable. There was something magical about seeing it with my own eyes, light created 28 million years ago.
There is so much to panic about today. Climate catastrophe, new virus strains, antibiotic resistance, food insecurity, the insect apocalypse, war, killer robots, disinformation… and the terrifying awareness that we have brought small people into this world and we won’t always be able to keep them safe. My brain can’t deal with that all the time and keep going. I have to find some moments of peace.
Sometimes, on a clear night, the best thing I can do is to go outside and look up. All the worries on earth fade into the background, and I am captivated again by the universe and all its vast, mysterious, fascinating beauty.
Kōtukutuku in spring 