Editorial: What will you learn from the eclipse?

The sun does not hide behind the moon that often.

OK, that’s not quite true. A solar eclipse happens about twice a year, even up to five times a year. A total eclipse, where the moon blacks out sun leaving only a brilliant halo, happens about once every year and a half. The famously unusual “blue moon,” where you get an extra full moon in a season, is twice as rare, coming every 33 months.

But what makes them feel so unusual is that while the planet can experience an eclipse more than once a year, it isn’t something we all experience at once. It only affects those in the right place at the right time.

Today, Western Pennsylvania is in that path. Whether we will see it is still up to Mother Nature as cloud cover could make all the excitement a moot point.

However, there are still lessons in the eclipse and the excitement surrounding it — and not just the kind of lessons science classes will be focusing on.

We can take the reality of the eclipse math and apply it to other areas. What reality? Important things happen whether we see them or not.

Too often, people can shrug off the things they believe don’t affect them because it is easy to think it isn’t happening at all. That’s lazy thinking.

Take education. Plenty of people grumble about the attention and funding schools receive, especially if the grumblers don’t have kids. Why pay for schools when you aren’t receiving a benefit?

The short reason isn’t warm and fuzzy altruism. It’s self interest. If you want people paying the taxes that will take care of you later, you need to make sure today’s children are being educated to bring in good paychecks.

Similar arguments can be made for health care or emergency services or almost any domestic issue — and more than a few international ones. Why does supporting Ukraine matter? Outside of humanitarian issues or high-minded ideas about supporting a democratic nation, there is flagrant pro-American sentiment. By shoring up Ukraine’s fight, the United States protects its own interests without risking American military lives.

A total eclipse doesn’t happen every day, but it happens often enough that it demonstrates the way all people are affected by global issues. Whether the clouds cover the celestial event or not, there’s still a good message written in the sky.