How to Stay Sane During a Solar Eclipse

Some people are apparently too fragile for the real world.

The author's reaction is near-hysterical but obviously authentic, so therefore valid. But I wouldn't want her anywhere near me during a total eclipse. I want to be free to experience the power of the event in my own way. I would also avoid mindlessly cheering crowds, who should leave it at the football game. Nature isn't 'performing,' like a striptease. For me and those like me, silent reverence is the appropriate response.

Why watch the puny solar eclipse when President Trump will be announcing his Afghanistan policy tonight? He is without a doubt the greatest darkness our country has ever produced.

Alternative method of staying sane during eclipse. Download 90 minute movie. Stay inside and watch movie. Ignore manufactured hysteria outside.

I'm fortunate to be in the path of this celestial phenomenon, you don't have to like science to appreciate something bigger than ourselves, I echo the thought of just enjoying it like the ancients did.

What a beautiful essay! Thank you.

If this piece had been published two weeks ago, I would be far north of my bed in Austin, excited and nervous at the prospect of experiencing the sublime tomorrow, along with millions of my countrymen and women. Instead, I am here, wondering how those who experience totality tomorrow will understand--and not--what they see. How millions of Americans feeling the silent roar of the moon's shadow and the death of the sun will come out of their two minutes, sharing their laughter and whoops, or their tears and shivers. What happens when a country that's always had at least a corner of its mind on the end of days stops to see it happen for in its backyards, state parks and two lane roads.

Thanks to Helen Macdonald for helping me begin to appreciate what my friends who've ventured out or live in the path will experience tomorrow.

It is an individual's personal feeling and decision how would you like to experience a natural event. Too many words spend to elaborate personal experience. The write-up is better suited for a personal emotional memoir or a novel. Narrative and flow of words are good. But It's just a natural event don't need to stretch it too thin.

Thanks for writing such a beautiful article. I loved the descriptions of the eclipse and how they made you feel.

"My heart jumped up to my throat, and my eyes grew hot with tears. I fell to my knees, feeling tiny and huge..."

What enviable moments of ecstasy the author must enjoy simply by gradually closing her window blinds.

This is beautiful writing that powerfully conveys the writer's experience. As for some of the comments--people, you don't have to agree or experience the same thing or feel that you are being told what to do. Just take it in and appreciate that there may be other ways of being than yours.

I'm going to walk out the backdoor and up the hill behind our house with my dog for an effortless 2 minute Totality.
By myself, no crowd of awed strangers hallucinating meaning...the author's tone is ridiculous. She doesn't seem to realize that the significance of the eclipse lies entirely within her own mind...

Hard to believe a word of this

Of all the reports I've read about the ancients and their fears and myths of eclipses, I've never read one word about the epidemics of blindness that must have occurred after. Why is that?

I'm going to experience the eclipse for myself, with a couple of close family members.

I don't need or want your claims of what's best for me, or how I should experience the eclipse or how I should feel about it when I do.

This is my experience to watch, think about and feel. All mine. Describe the science, but butt out of trying to tell me what to feel and think.

I'm not a religious person, but I enjoy some of those old sword-and-sandal biblical epics. One of my favorites is "Barabbas," the 1961 Dino De Laurentiis production about the thief, played by Anthony Quinn, who was freed in place of Christ. It contains what was, in my opinion, one of the most spectacular scenes ever filmed. On February 15, 1961, the Crucifixion was filmed under an actual total solar eclipse in Roccastrada, Tuscany. Aside from the incredibly complex logistics of financing, arranging, transporting, hoping for good weather and filming, the combination of the experience itself and what it was depicting must have been a truly profound experience.

Such bizarre, self-involved writing--is the author channeling Trudeau's Boopsie?

The amazing thing about solar eclipses is that the Moon subtends the same solid angle as the Sun. What are the odds against that?

Ms. MacDonald is an extraordinary writer. Her prose is gorgeous, and this is another fine example. Read her book, "H is for Hawk". You will enjoy every sentence, and every word.

1991 Los Angeles. Partial among Christo's umbrellas. / 1994. Annular. Sunspot, NM. / 1998. Total. Off Panama on Pacific. / 1999 Cornwall UK. Total. Rained out. /2005 Madrid. Total. / 2012 Annular. Our driveway in Albuquerque. Had my Griffiith Observatory Solorama Viewer for all of them. / 2017 Sending emissary to Carhenge NB. It's a wonderful life.

please, goddess---DO NOT HOLD UP YOUR PHONE TO RECORD---just watch!

i will watch alone so that i do not have to be fully disgusted at the phone holding throngs--not watching, not living in the NOW but instead recording ---a recording they will quite certainly not watch. If for some reason you must watch it happen again, on a screen, just google it---oh how i loathe the constant recording ---just live your lives, people!

The author writes that "Totality — that point of a solar eclipse when the sun is entirely covered by the moon — is incomprehensible. Your mind can’t grasp any of it." But I've seen a few eclipses myself, and though they were very stunning events, I found I COULD comprehend what was occurring and did NOT get filled with wordless dread and visions of my death. I feel that despite the lovely descriptive writing here, perhaps trying to capture the Wordsworthian "sublime" or the Derridean "abyss," that this piece is strangely overwrought. This is a well-explained, even scientific, event. We really won't find ourselves"in the underworld in the company of all the shades of the dead."

"Totality — that point of a solar eclipse when the sun is entirely covered by the moon — is incomprehensible. Your mind can’t grasp any of it...."

What is this, 30,000 BC? We need to see this is a crowd so we don't lose our minds? Honestly. Solar eclipses, like lunar eclipses, are beautiful, and rare, hence newsworthy. But "incomprehensible"? The sun is not "covered" by the moon, it's just temporarily obstructed. Wait a few minutes, and all will be well. Well, until nightfall.

The totality of a total eclipse may be incomprehensible to a certain part of your mind, but for the other deeper part of your emotions it's a reminder that we are surrounded by a universe whose workings usually remain hidden -- because we're not paying much attention much of the time.

The eclipse makes you pay attention.