The brightest meteor I’ve seen was ten years ago, in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. I was staying on a smallholding on the edge of the Dargle forest, entertaining some deeply existential thoughts and nursing a beer, whilst gazing up at a remarkably starry sky. Suddenly, a brilliant fireball ripped through the darkness. It was visible for mere seconds before disappearing, but it was utterly exhilarating. I immediately began tracing the story of this celestial visitor in my mind. How old was it? How vast were the distances it had travelled? Even if it had spent its existence within our own solar system, the history behind that brief flash of fire and light was enough to strike me with wonder. Of all the places I could have been, and all the moments I could have looked up, I had witnessed this one.
And then, as so often happens when I am confronted by the cosmic beauty of a starry sky, I began to ponder the vast distance between us and our nearest neighbouring star system, Alpha Centauri. And of course, that distance was nothing compared to the size of our galaxy, with its innumerable stars and planets, some of which may even host life. And then what of the Local Group, our neighbourhood of galaxies? And the superclusters beyond? And the universe as a whole?
Very rapidly, I plunge into the most wonderful existential wormhole. I am reminded of my smallness, and how the various problems, challenges, heartaches, regrets and aspirations I’ve encountered during my time on this planet, whilst deeply meaningful to me, are most certainly not of cosmic significance. The fears and hopes and dreams I hold for the future are unlikely to make much of a dent in spacetime. This does not make them meaningless, nor does it make suffering any less real. But the dark sky can help us confront our own smallness, and in doing so, loosen the hold that our problems have upon us. There is, as so many others have experienced, an almost paradoxical comfort in this.
There is a term for the wonder we experience when confronted by something so vast that it stretches our understanding: awe. Research has linked experiences of awe with a reduced focus on the self, greater generosity and a willingness to help others. Separate research has found that spending time in nature can reduce rumination, that miserable tendency to turn the same troubling thoughts over and over in our minds. These are different findings, and neither establishes that looking up at the stars is a treatment for mental illness. But they resonate with something I have experienced myself: there is not simply beauty to be found outside in nature, but also comfort, perspective, and sometimes a renewed sense of purpose.
I have been lucky enough to visit some of the most beautiful places on the planet. These have been wonderful experiences, and have strengthened my love for and resolve to protect nature.
But the night sky is a different beast. So often, the most beautiful places are also the least developed, and therefore more likely to offer views free of light pollution. Yet unlike the Grand Canyon, or Cape Point, or Eryri, the sky is already there, above every one of us. We should not have to cross a continent to encounter it.
Of course, simply looking up is no longer enough in many places. Getting away from too much light can require a car, money, time, and somewhere safe to go. What ought to be available without admission or expense has become, for many, something that must be sought out. The dark sky is a shared inheritance whose accessibility we are eroding.
It also tells us a different story to terrestrial beauty. Our home planet is precious: so far as we know, a little beacon of consciousness and life in an otherwise indifferent universe. But it is also so small. When I look beyond it, I cannot help but wonder whether somewhere else, something else is looking back into the same darkness, confronting its own existence. I have no answer to that question. But being able to ask it, beneath a sky that gives some sense of its enormity, provides me with a context I struggle to find anywhere else.
And here we wander into firmly philosophical waters, and towards the point that I believe deserves so much more attention: the relationship between the night sky and spirituality.
To be clear, I am not a religious man, and I don’t appeal specifically to religion when I refer to spirituality. Nor do I feel my argument is irrelevant to those who do. Spirituality is, in my mind, an amalgam of emotions, thoughts and desires through which we confront the human condition. It encompasses more than any single emotion, but is also something different from a philosophical argument. It allows us to search for purpose in the context of the transience and contradictions and absurdities that are intrinsically part of being human.
When I gaze up at the stars, I wonder how many other people throughout the human story have confronted existence by doing exactly the same thing, and decided: there is meaning to be found here! Countless others, I expect. People whose languages I could not speak, whose beliefs I might not understand, and whose lives bore almost no resemblance to mine. Yet here is an experience we could share.
There are urgent ecological reasons to protect our nighttime environments. Artificial light at night disrupts insect behaviour and interactions, can disorient sea turtle hatchlings and migrating birds, and affects the rhythms of living things. It also reaches into our own lives, suppressing melatonin and disrupting the natural cycles that help regulate sleep.
But alongside these harms is a loss that is much harder to describe, let alone quantify. I believe light pollution is also eroding an opportunity to nourish our spiritual wellbeing.
We can measure how much darkness we have lost. We can investigate the effects of artificial light on wildlife, and examine what happens to our bodies when night no longer brings darkness. We can also study the cultural and psychological significance of the sky. But no measurement can fully capture what it means to lose a source of wonder and perspective that has accompanied us throughout our history.
The experience of feeling at once infinitely small, but also overwhelmed by awe and wonder at being part of our mysterious and achingly beautiful universe, is one I treasure. The stars invite us to imagine an impossibly vast universe, and in doing so, to question the boundaries of our own possibility.
The night sky is our greatest collective therapist, counsellor, and spiritual guru. It has been there through lives and civilisations we can scarcely imagine, offering its contemplative silence to whoever cared to look up. It is deserving of our respect and protection. And the opportunity to encounter it should remain an inheritance we can all share.
References
Piff et al. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Awe, generosity and helping behaviour.
Bratman et al. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. PNAS. Nature exposure and repetitive negative thinking.
Owens & Lewis (2018). The impact of artificial light at night on nocturnal insects: A review and synthesis. Ecology and Evolution.
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The impact of artificial lighting on nocturnal wildlife. Includes effects on birds and sea turtle hatchlings.
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (2023). Light and dark: Underappreciated exposures with big effects on health. Light exposure, melatonin and circadian rhythms.
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash