My wife and I have a fascination with the stars, the winter sky is our favorite. When we have a chance to stand outside and look at the stars together it serves as a reminder of the place we occupy in the universe and helps provide perspective.
Light pollution makes looking at the stars difficult in populated areas. Light pollution is the brightening of the night sky caused by streetlights and other man-made sources, which inhibits the observation of stars and planets. (Definition from Oxford Dictionaries). Light pollution is represented on maps for star gazers to find the best places to look at the stars. This site one example of such a map.
While driving from northern Utah (high light pollution) to southern Utah you will cross areas in which the light pollution is exceptionally low. I did this drive with my family a few days ago and was reminded of the impact the light pollution had on our ability to see stars. While driving through the low light pollution (we are looking through our car windows) we could see thousands more stars. On several occasions we almost pulled over to look at the stars. We could even see a faintness of the Milky Way while driving on the highway. When we arrived at our destination the thousands of stars seemed to disappear. We could see the exceptionally bright objects like Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter but we couldn’t see the stars we had seen 45 minutes prior. What fascinated me is that the stars didn’t go anywhere, there are still there – we just couldn’t see them.
What then is the insight I had? Each of us as leaders and human beings are like the night sky. If we stay clear of the pollution in our lives and focus our attention, we can see the immeasurable ability that is within each of us. If we are polluted with the distractions around us, we won’t be able to see clearly what we can do and more importantly we will struggle to see the big picture.
Today I have two invitations for you:
- Go look at the stars. It does wonders for me and bonus points if you look at the stars from a high light pollution location and compare it to a low light pollution location.
- Examine your life and pick one thing you can remove from your life to see more clearly who you are and what you are capable of.
For number 2 I have set time limits on my phone (10 minutes per day) for all my social media apps. I don’t often use social media so I thought it would be simple, but it is harder than I thought. By doing this I am trying to remove the distractions from social media so I can more intentionally focus on the things that are important to me and my growth.
I’d love to hear how it goes for you.
