Welcome to the new academic year! It has been wonderful to see so many new people in person and to refresh old friendships in these few short weeks that we have been gearing up to start the school year. Everything has been somewhat overwhelming, yet we are also buzzing with fresh energy and renewed hope for what is possible at a place like Yale.
This summer I have been riveted by all the vibrant and surprising images and amazing breakthroughs coming out of the Webb Telescope developments. One of the more recent articles out of the UK stated that with this telescope and its considerable discoveries we are likely to catch a glimpse of “the dawn of the universe”. Wow! Is this just hyperbolic rhetoric, or is it real? Millions and millions of galaxies can be found in something that is about the size of a grain of sand. It all feels like more than one can actually conceive or imagine. A truly memorable piece I read encouraged all who are looking at these new discoveries, especially those more revealing images of the planet
Jupiter, to look at them and study them sideways. Study them sideways!?! I love this idea and think that perhaps it might be a good way to approach this new year tempered by that perspective. Let’s tilt our heads, take a minute, step back and look at things sideways. Am I seeing this new course for all it is? Is my roommate wanting to share a bit more of who they are than what is plainly in front of me? Am I actually studying what I really want? Is this person a real friend? Is this new group truly worth my precious time? Looking at things sideways gives us permission to change the vista and in changing the vista we can change our perspective and in turn perhaps be pleasantly surprised. Jupiter is still a formidable planet no matter how one looks at it, however, looking at it sideways invites us to go off kilter, out of order and just take it all in with a
slight shift that then perhaps lends itself to a fuller picture of what actually is. Looking at something sideways leaves room for astonishment, for awe, for amazement. The universe is vast, we are small. Exhale, tilt your head a bit and take even more of it in, sideways.