Looking Away So It Becomes Clear

I have a knack at spotting satellites in the night sky.  Or so I'd like to think (although my friend Lynnette did tell me that once).

In the 15 minutes I star gazed tonight I picked out three.  It helped that I was in the country where there's not as much peripheral light.  Although the Minnesota humidity does play a role in visibility--growing up in dry Edmonton I reminisce about the pitch black new moon nights peppered with the fantastically bright stars.

A couple of times tonight I thought I spotted a satellite when in fact it was just a star.  The funny thing is, if I would just stare at the star directly, it did look like it was moving.  It wasn't until I changed my focus to include neighboring stars that I could tell that it was actually stationary.

Context!

It got me thinking how life can be this way.  How things look one way until you see them in context, until you change your focus.  Until you glance away for a quick second and peek back with a fresh perspective.

And how by intensely staring at something it (ironically) doesn't necessarily make it more clear.

Fascinating.