Hello everyone! Happy Monday! Coach Kate here for another edition of our morning Minute Explorations. I have been hosting this space for a while now, exploring these mornings with you all in usually 5 minutes or less, and something that has stood out to me lately is this wanting to keep the door open for explorations we can all share together in the mornings. I have been listening, and I have heard you all, and I want to expand this space more interactively moving forwards. This means starting Thursday of this week, we will leave the door open for longer episodes with guest inclusion every day, instead of just Fridays, and stay on a consistent schedule too! This will hopefully turn this monologuing space into a dialogue we can all share and contribute in together. The overall experience and format will basically be the same, we will just add in some of you all to the discussion now too, so be on the lookout later this week for this new interactive part of our daily tradition here.
This past weekend I witnessed something I never thought I'd see where I am: The Northern Lights. Now I am a huge space and science enthusiast, so not only was I aware of the possibility of the Aurora Borealis being visible from where I am, but also my phone was getting notifications all day from numerous people hyped up on the solar storm. Now I took this all with a grain of salt, there have been numerous times in the past few years that the Aurora Borealis could come my way, and I got all prepared, and got nothing. So this time, I had a night already planned with my friends, and I told them that it was possible and we all just had plans to enjoy the night and see what happened. We just had the general direction and general time we thought it might start in our minds. So you would not believe our absolute shock and utter joy when we looked north around 10pm to find red lights dancing into the horizon, and then fill up the whole sky. We brought blankets out to the middle of the field and filled up our camera roles with the reds, the blues, the greens that danced overhead.
In the subsequent hours then days that followed, my phone was filled with aurora pictures from friends, my social media was filled with Aurora photos from all over the world, and there was a fervor, an electric enthusiasm cascading through so many people from all over the world that had experienced this together somehow, all blown away by the sky and now connected through this singular solar event. It got me thinking about how the sky connects us, how we look up to the same night and have the same sunlight cascading on us. The sky has no borders, no preferences, no race or religions, but is there for all of us: reflecting down on us what we give it. So Today's quote is from Mae Jemison, the first African American Woman to travel to space.
"When you look at the Earth from space, you realize that our planet is a beautiful, interconnected system. We are all in this together."
- Mae Jemison, Space Shuttle astronaut
This says so much about how the sky reflects down on us, sees us, and is is part of our human experience. I saw so many people connect this past weekend over a shared event in the sky, so I wanted to share a perspective of what the sky sees in us as well. We cannot think of the sky and not think of humanity as a whole either. The shared experience of looking at Earth from Space is so impactful to those astronauts that experience it, that it has a whole term of how it changes their entire perspective on Humanity: this is called The Overview Effect. Now one of these exploration mornings we will share together we will deep dive into this concept of the Overview Effect and how it impacts our life, but today, today's exploration is about connectedness. You see, we didn't have to change who we are to experience the northern lights, we didn't have to be perfect, we didn't have to have our finances in order, or wear the perfect outfit. The sky didn't car about our hair or what we had for lunch, and neither do those we connected with over the event. It was about the shared experience, and how we belonged to it and each other through it-- as we are.
The sky connects us because we belong under it, we aren't trying to fit in, we belong just because we exist.
I'm Coach Kate. Thanks for listening to another Minute Exploration with me. If you liked what you heard, give me a follow-- I host this space weekday mornings and will expand it to be more interactive with you as as we grow in this space together. I wish you all a wonderful, and connected start to your week.
