Tonight we’re the sea and the rhythm there.

As the moon turned red, everyone I knew had their faces upturned to the sky. I had been wondering if anyone would watch it. The cosmos is increasingly ignored these days; after all, people are people, and they forget to look up. Who remembers the stars when a six credit assessment is staring one in the face – or for those marginally less self centred than I: avian flu, civil war and poverty?

These last few weeks I’ve been what one could only term ‘a basket case’. It was a matter of looming exams, the ever-encroaching prospect of freedom just over the horizon – with which comes responsibility, a film whose production seemed to be opposed by the Gods and the pile of novels and text books piling up beside my bed. I was making plans for my future, applying to university and for multiple scholarships. Everything seemed a matter of scheduling, of planning. If I could find the right colour-coding system, my troubles would disappear. The only problem seemed to be the amount of hours in the day.

But the lunar eclipse had grabbed my attention. A red moon is something out of the ordinary, and it begged me to glance upward, away from the trivialities of my life. And while I was lying flat on my balcony, staring out to space, the universe became simultaneously more comprehensible. I remembered that I wasn’t really looking up at the stars, but out. All of a sudden I was dangling there on the side of a rock, with only gravity to keep me safe. I could look up above my head and down below my feet and see the giant expanse that was the height at which we float.

It’s dwarfing. One forgets the linear surface of the earth: that which hosts our egos, political borders, celebrities and banks. Instead, I am merely a singular human, dangling on the side of a rock. The sky starts at the ground beneath my feet. I’m as close to deep space as I can get – I’m in it. And I’m thinking that I might stop and say thank you once in a while. What else is there to do while we dangle?

Life is a bizarre thing. We don’t know why we’re here, or quite what the absolute rules are. We try to experience things in our short lives, try to dance and play on the surface of the earth. But how often do we feel thankful for not being flung off its surface? Where would we be without the yellow line in front of the rollercoaster tracks, the safety belt protecting us from oblivion? How often do we thank gravity for the rain? For skydiving?

We’re so caught up in our issues that we forget to look up and out. Granted, knowledge of our world is important, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. Certainly our own personal problems shouldn’t swamp us like they do. Instead keep in mind that we’re all dangling, every single one of us. So I’ll stop making plans, looking to the future. Aim for ‘delicious ambiguity’, as Gilda Ragner termed it. I’ll dangle here and remember how, at the end of the day, I am simply a speck glinting on the side of a rock in the middle of nowhere. I am small, unique and irreplaceable. And I am thankful.