BENGALURU: Earlier this week, along with the summer solstice, we saw a solar eclipse. While many did get the chance to witness the spectacular celestial event, some of us, thanks to the monsoon clouds, experienced a darkening of the skies, and with it, maybe hoped for more rain but just got disappointed as the clouds lightened up again without the slightest bit of precipitation when the moon moved on and didn’t obstruct the sun any more.
It is a pretty regular feature and yet there is much apprehension, superstition and fear over it. In religious homes, there are prayers, fasting and rituals to overcome the negative energy attributed to such events. Mythology has us believing that copulation under such an influence is a strict no-no and children born out of such conceptions, or under such circumstances, might just be different, and not in a socially accepted way. We are advised by believers to stay indoors, stay quiet and wait for it to pass, and when it is over, to then have a bath, give thanks for things being ok and get on with life.
In love and relationships, every now and then, something comes up that eclipses our here-and-now experience of being connected on an ongoing manner. Many of these are recurring events, anniversaries and remembrances of events past, such as birthdays of an enormously impactful relationship in the past, or maybe anniversary of the death of a previously beloved, and sometimes, it is a re-occurrence of something, like an annual summer visit of parents or a trip one has to endure without much of a choice.
When it occurs, it can be like the sun suddenly disappeared from your life for a bit – everything seemed like a general day in your life, you were all just being warm and friendly and it becomes dark and foreboding. You may not really know what it is and just miss the warm,happy times you had just experienced, and in missing those times, you might get angry, upset and even scared.
The anxiety caused by the sudden change in your loved one can be very unsettling. It is so hard to let it be and just wait for the person to turn back. We want to feel like we have power, and might try desperate things to get our love to shine back, but like with a regular solar eclipse, they may really have no impact at all in the private process that your loved one is going through at that moment.
For a solar eclipse, even when we know what it is rationally, we might still do superstitious things, as if our efforts are what makes the sun shine again. When something celestial triggers that action even in a generally rational person, is it any surprise that for any eclipse in more personal spaces, we panic? We really stop only when we fully understand and can accept it with clarity.
The writer is a counsellor at InnerSight