The Stars and My Mental Health

Regardless of how this blog may read, I consider myself relatively mentally healthy. I say relatively because as I look around me, I see I’m the only one not wearing underwear on my head (oh, wait a minute… How did that get there?). I’m also the only one in the room, but never mind that…

I attribute the success of my mental stability to a healthy dose of not taking myself too seriously, and spending most of my life studying the stars and looking up.

To my mind, there are very few experiences that are free and don’t require a prescription, and can calm fears and allow one to put their lives in perspective better than learning about our universe. I’ve written before about why cosmology matters and in that post, I tried to relay how learning about stars and how our universe started can have a profound effect on our lives.

Taking some time to learn about the stars gives you a resource that you can call upon to help you sort out what’s important. Doing that sets you apart from the people around you who are too busy and caught up in confusion, you’ll have a tool they won’t have, and it’s a pretty powerful one.

Today, and in the spirit of Mental Health Month, I want to point out that staring at the sky can also keep you sane. Taking time out to sit outside, holding someone close, or just sitting by yourself is a mentally cleansing experience. Looking at the stars on a clear, dark night, it’s altogether too easy to let the vastness of our cosmos wash over you and cleanse your troubles with a healthy dose of perspective.

Yes, we are a small, tiny, infinitesimal part of this amazing universe, but we are a self-aware small, tiny, infinitesimal part and it may be that humanity (such as we are) is a mechanism that the universe uses to come to know itself.

I am a person who is prone to depression, it is something I used to fight more than I want to admit. I had a very hard time getting the point of all this, and throughout my life, whenever I felt that way, nothing consoled me like a good session under the night sky. I vividly remember spending countless nights, just walking and looking up while I was in the biggest mental funk, and most of the time, I was able to return feeling better.

I still have no idea what the point to this whole existence is, but the more time I spend under the stars, the more I think I don’t need to know the point. The unbounded possibilities that crowd this illimitable universe is the only thing I need to hold onto reason.

The insane immensity of our universal home is my anchor to sanity. The amount of reasonableness in my mind is tied to my appreciation of the serene beauty of the night sky.

If there is so much that is possible, it’s insane NOT to try and experience as much of it as we can before we die.

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