If you’re ambivalent about how to answer, then we’ve about reached the point of no return. Artificial brightness that mimics daylight already obliterates the night sky.
Look up. The sky may be dark but blank. Excessive light keeps us from seeing the stars, planets and constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. They are, however, up there, waiting to be seen.
Instructions by scientists for night skygazing (and, excitingly, how to locate the International Space Station) include searching out spots without artificial light sources. From here in the suburbs, that’s miles away.
Even astronomers, who require inky darkness to study our solar system, outer space and galaxies, are having a difficult time. The vast Atacama Desert in Chile was the best place on Earth to study space — until recently. Entire human communities are encroaching into this once isolated place and bringing light pollution.
To know the splendor of night, Wendell Berry encourages,
“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”
Berry’s graceful poem reminds me what I was told in Africa. Where electricity can be rare and expensive, people use “African eyes” to find their way. One’s own eyes can, indeed, adjust to darkness, as I discovered once my panic subsided.
Taking a walk at sunset is an amazing practice with silence as a welcoming feature. According to the Torah, silence can prepare us for something important. Mechanical hums, like vehicle tires spinning on asphalt, give way to nature’s sounds; bird songs at dusk, the stretching of the last crinkled leaves and calls among geese as they flap into the distance.
A good night’s sleep comes to an end with a refreshed awakening. And quite the opposite, with thoughts whirling and body tossing, a sleepless night can end with fatigue as the glow of dawn emerges. Our complete health, both brain and body, depends essentially on the natural cycle of days separated into light and dark run by our biological clocks.
Throughout the ages, the understanding of sleep has had different interpretations and values. One thing has remained the same though: sleep is necessary. Sleep aids in having both sharp memory and concentration, and our emotional wellbeing. The latter may be ambushed by mood swings, anxiety and general pessimism when we erroneously believe that we will catch up on sleep on a future night of the week.
We only fool ourselves when we think that losing sleep is okay. Our brains need restful sleep each and every night. Sleep is the time when brains clean themselves of toxic proteins that have accumulated during the daylight hours. Brains strengthen our neural connections and trim them during sleep, therefore enhancing our ability to be mentally astute when we wake.
In our attempts to bend nature to our will, we likely sabotage our health.
Let’s ask, “What’s the right thing to do, living within the context of nature’s community?” For humans to survive and thrive, we must live in harmony with the world around us. That means joining others to help nature, like DARKSKY International. When we don’t, we suffer.
Let’s be the ones who save the night sky for ourselves and all creatures. In that way we can experience fully the words of God, “Turn your gaze toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them!” (Genesis 15:5)
Mary M. Greenberg, Ph.D., serves on the State of Kansas Holocaust Commission. Her speaking engagements on impeding antisemitism are based on her research that advances the study of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. She is dedicated, also, to writing about how a Jewish perspective enriches our contemporary lives.