moon hides in darkness
snug in the sun’s warm embrace
trust what can’t be seen
In modern western culture we are conditioned to seek and rely on evidence of our progress and prowess.
But the evidence we see is often misleading.
We are living in the Age of Analytics, an era where seemingly everything is measurable and quantifiable.
I wear an Apple Watch, and have an obsession with closing my rings daily. Each month it gives me a challenge and I strive hard to meet it.
Each day, I check the stats on my blog, looking at how many visitors came and how many views I had. I want people to like and share my social media posts. I’d love nothing more than to see you opt-in to receive my newsletter (consider this your invitation).
In short, don’t let what I’m about to share lead you to believe I’m immune from any of this.
I may write a lot about esoteric arts but I also love my analytics. A good spreadsheet soothes my soul.
And ….
This is also how I know that it’s easy to get caught up in the hype. It’s easy to be lured into a false narrative driven by numbers, to believe that the metrics speak to meaningful results.
When we base our decisions and our direction only on what we can see, we ignore a wealth of information and insight that can’t be seen — or that can’t be seen yet.
To give you a concrete example, although I look at my blog stats daily, I don’t use those stats to drive my decisions on what to write. Most of my essays garner little attention in the first day, week, month, or even year. But then suddenly they rank at the top of Google.
You can’t always see the results immediately.
As much as I have experienced this firsthand, it’s easy to forget when surrounded by people who broadcast their big results.
In an environment where the sun — the light we see daily — is given prominence, what is unseen is easily ignored.
One reason I follow the moon cycles is that the moon is the counterbalance to our sun-centric culture.
Every month, the moon goes dark for a few days as it renews itself in the heart of the sun. Even when hidden from view it’s pulling the tides, doing its work.
The new moon is a monthly reminder to trust the processes happening out of our view, the workings of a system far beyond our intellectual grasp, the mechanisms we can’t see.
Just because you don’t see results from your efforts yet doesn’t mean you won’t see results.
Like the moon, they may just be temporarily out of view.
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