Last night I went outside and looked up. This may have been a mistake. There was a light moving across the night sky, and I assumed I was looking at an airplane. Nothing unusual about that. Then it moved sideways. Not turned sideways. Moved sideways.
It continued traveling in one direction and then suddenly jumped rapidly on a diagonal before continuing again.
Okay. That got my attention. Then it did it again.
At one point, there was a flash, and the light appeared to jump a considerable distance backward from the direction it had been traveling.
I stood there watching it.
I don’t do drugs. I wasn’t drinking. And unless weather balloons have received a rather impressive technological upgrade, I’m reasonably confident I wasn’t watching one of those.
I don’t know what I saw. There. I said it.
Interestingly, those five words seem extraordinarily difficult for human beings.
I don’t know what I saw.
Not: “It was aliens.”
Not: “It was a secret government spacecraft.”
Not: “It was an airplane and your eyes were playing tricks on you.”
Not even: “David has finally lost it.”
Although you’re certainly entitled to that one. I simply don’t know. And I’ve discovered that not knowing is actually a wonderful place to stand.
I’ve Been Here Before
The strange thing is, this wasn’t my first experience with something behaving oddly in the sky. The last time was more than fifty years ago. I was a youngster living in Astoria, Oregon.
Sometime around 1970, the local radio station DJ, KAST, began talking about reports of strange lights in the sky. Naturally, I went outside.
Then I ran next door because one of the kids had a telescope. The telescope wasn’t much help.
But before long, we didn’t need one. As I remember that night, people started coming out of their houses. Neighbors stood in their yards looking upward. More and more people joined them.
Eventually, it seemed as though everybody was outside watching the show.
And these weren’t simply lights traveling neatly from one horizon to another. They appeared to make abrupt changes in direction.
Things weren’t behaving the way things in the sky were supposed to behave. My recollection is that military aircraft were eventually sent up in response.
I couldn’t wait for the newspaper the next morning. Surely this was going to be front-page news.
At the crack of dawn, the newspaper landed on our porch. Nothing.
I went to school. Some kids laughed when I talked about it. Others had seen it too.
Later, I called KAST. As I remember it, suddenly nobody knew what I was talking about.
That was a peculiar experience for a kid.
And apparently I filed it away somewhere in the cabinet marked:
THINGS I CANNOT EXPLAIN.
I didn’t spend the next fifty years obsessing about it. Life had plenty of other material.
Then Last Night Happened
More than half a century later, I’m standing beneath another night sky watching something I cannot explain.
So, naturally, I did what any modern human being does when confronted by one of life’s mysteries.
I asked a machine. That didn’t go particularly well. I was given several perfectly reasonable explanations for why human perception can be unreliable.
And that’s true. Our eyes can fool us. Our brains fill gaps. Distance is difficult to judge against a dark sky. Lights can appear to move strangely. Atmospheric conditions can create peculiar effects.
All true.
But there’s a funny thing about explanations. An explanation can be possible without being the explanation.
Sometimes we’re so uncomfortable saying “I don’t know” that we’ll grab the nearest plausible answer and promote it immediately to certainty.
That works in both directions.
“Obviously aliens!” Really? How do you know?
“Obviously an optical illusion!” Really? How do you know?
What if we simply left one chair empty for mystery?
Reality Doesn’t Owe Us an Explanation
I think this reaches considerably farther than strange lights in the night sky. We do this everywhere.
Something happens in a relationship. We decide why.
Someone doesn’t return our call. We know what they’re thinking.
A business opportunity collapses. We immediately construct the story explaining what happened.
Someone behaves strangely. Within minutes, we’ve diagnosed their motives, childhood, attachment style, and probably their mother.
Maybe we know. Maybe we don’t.
Reality is an excellent collaborator. It just refuses to rehearse.
There are things we experience that won’t immediately fit inside the filing system we’ve built for the world.
That’s okay.
We don’t have to force them in.
You Don’t Have to Choose a Camp
This may be the most freeing part.
I don’t have to become a UFO guy because I saw something I can’t explain.
I don’t have to buy a telescope.
I don’t have to start a podcast.
I don’t have to build a bunker.
And I don’t have to convince you.
Likewise, I don’t have to pretend I didn’t see what I saw simply because somebody else has a more comfortable explanation for it. I can remain curious. That’s enough.
Maybe somebody reading this knows exactly what I witnessed. Maybe there is a wonderfully ordinary explanation. I’d actually enjoy hearing it. Or maybe I’ll wait another fifty years.
Although at this stage of the game, that particular research strategy may be overly optimistic.
Leave Room for Wonder
I went looking online for the Astoria event I remember from childhood. Years ago, I did find it documented. No such luck today.
Interestingly, there are documented reports of unusual aerial sightings around Astoria from other years. So apparently that little corner of Oregon has had its share of people looking upward and scratching their heads.
Does that prove anything about what I saw? Nope.
And I rather like it that way. Because maybe every unexplained thing doesn’t need to become a belief. Maybe some things can simply become a question.
We can observe carefully. We can investigate. We can consider conventional explanations. We can change our minds when better information arrives. And after we’ve done all that, occasionally we may still be left with three magnificent words: I don’t know.
There is humility there. There is curiosity there. And if we resist filling that empty space too quickly… there might even be wonder.
So, yes. I’ll probably go outside and look at the night sky again. Eventually.
But if anything up there starts jumping backward again… I’m going inside. I’ve got work to do.