Not too long ago, astronomers captured a transit of Mercury, that is the passage of the planet across the face of the Sun as seen from Earth.* Mercury seems tiny in the image, a stop-action sequence, but we should remember that the planet’s orbit averages about 35,000,000 miles from the Sun. So, as small as Mercury seems relative to the Sun, it is, in fact, even comparatively smaller than it seems. And that is because of its relative proximity to us. In short, closer things seem bigger.
And that’s the way it is with family and local matters. They are closer, so they seem to be bigger. To people more distant from our daily concerns, what we think of as “important” or consider to be large matters seem small. They have the perspective of distance.
It might behoove us to think of our own “problems” from a more distant perspective. This isn’t a new thought, but it is an effective strategy for putting the matters of our lives in a less emotionally charged perspective.
*https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2019-11-08/mercury-putting-on-rare-show-monday-parading-across-the-sun
And that’s the way it is with family and local matters. They are closer, so they seem to be bigger. To people more distant from our daily concerns, what we think of as “important” or consider to be large matters seem small. They have the perspective of distance.
It might behoove us to think of our own “problems” from a more distant perspective. This isn’t a new thought, but it is an effective strategy for putting the matters of our lives in a less emotionally charged perspective.
*https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2019-11-08/mercury-putting-on-rare-show-monday-parading-across-the-sun
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