Staying Home is Really Okay
When too much becomes too much, and you just need to pass
It turns out I’m going to miss the eclipse.
Since the next one will be in 2045, and — at 90 — I have no plans to be around then, I guess I’ll finish life on this planet without having witnessed this extraordinary phenomenon. Which is OK. I’ll watch it on TV, in real time, and that’ll be special.
But being there would be spectacular. It’s the business of how to separate the special from the spectacular, and make rational choices between the two, that gets harder as we humanoids get older.
This is my recent lesson in making such a choice.
It started with an invitation to join a trip arranged by a favorite San Francisco-based organization, the Commonwealth Club , for which I’ve long been (and still am) a volunteer. Small group, brief time, expensive but not break-the-bank expensive, and this would be a once-in-a lifetime event. Another Club member was even looking for a roommate so I’d avoid the single-supplement cost.
The trip was to a south Texas ranch directly in the path of the solar eclipse, pick-up in Dallas on Sunday afternoon, return to DFW Tuesday morning. As just about anyone in the country knows by now, the eclipse will cross the U.S. — its “path of totality”…
