Think you're a big shot? Look up.

Starry night over Lorneville, Nova Scotia (July 4, 2018)

You don't have to trek to the Yukon or stand alone in the middle of the Mojave Desert to feel insignificant. Just hang out with a narcissist. Just kidding. Our sense of worth and being really take a cosmic ride when you look up at the spillage of stars that adorn a clear night's sky. You have to get away from bright city lights and get lucky with good weather, but those little sparkles above our heads are a constant reminder that our worries down here on Earth are huge only to us and our very small circle.

There's nothing that puts us back in place and resets our perspective on life like contemplating something unimaginably bigger than we are. My first trip to Alaska gave me that feeling. Not only was it a huge mass of land as the largest U.S. state, it was a place where I was not in charge. I was reminded at every turn that I was indeed very, very small – and I loved it. The land was vast and the animals were seemingly dinosauric and I knew that no matter how important I thought I was, my very existence could be wiped away in seconds by raw animal instinct. Swipe left, delete. Just like that. It was as exhilarating as it was frightening. What a wondrous place. What I didn't get to see due to overcast skies was a clear night's sky. Being able to see the Aurora Borealis (or Australis for that matter) is still on my bucket list of photo ops. A picture of a starry sky over Denali (Mt. McKinley) would be a triumph for my ever-burgeoning photographic quests.

Portage Glacier, Alaska. A scan from a 1990 film print.

You might not get to Alaska or some other far-flung "wonder" destination on this planet any time soon, but you can easily carve yourself some space and some alone time to take in a show like no other. You can even bring a companion or two whom you enjoy having those mind-blowing conversations with, but make sure they appreciate what you're up to, especially the need for moments of sheer silence. After all, this is spiritual. This is personal. Quiet contemplation under the stars has a therapeutic effect on the soul like few other escapes.

Think about the billions – no, trillions – of glowing bodies in the dark sky and the few that you're actually able to see with your own eyes. Think about the billions of years it has taken for their light to reach you and the fact that they might not even be there any longer as you gaze at them. You could be reading a cosmic goodbye letter written long, long ago. Each point of light has a story to tell and you will never be able to know but a few of them in your lifetime. Oh, did I mention that just about everything you're able to see is just in our galaxy? To say that there are quite a few more out there is an understatement. There is a grand total of one galaxy that you can see with the naked eye from Earth – Andromeda – and to us mortals, it appears like any other point of light.

One of my favorite sites for finding out what those points of light up there are doing from day to day is Earthsky.org. There is so much going on in each evening's sky that sky geeks like me depend on sites like this in order not to miss special events – sometimes once-in-a-lifetime events. For example, today is the closest Mars has been to our planet since 2003, when it was closer to Earth than any time in 60,000 years. It won't appear as large as the moon as some online hoaxes boast, but it will be distinctly bright and red and will remain so throughout the month of August. It's an orbital quirk that we just happen to be around for. Take out some binoculars or a telescope and have fun peering into that cold, dusty world. It might not appear like anything more than an orange disk, but let your imagination take you the rest of the way. Remember, there are human-made machines roaming that sphere right now. That fact alone is amazing.

2012 Transit of Venus (black spot) across the Sun. The last such event in our lifetime.

Besides witnessing a total solar eclipse, which I managed to miss in the U.S. last year due to prior commitments last summer, I'm in constant pursuit of rare celestial events. Back in 2012, the transit of Planet Venus across the disc of the Sun was one such occasion. This transit is so rare that none had occurred between the late 1700s and 2004. The next one will occur in 2117. I didn't anticipate being available for that next one so imagine my self-imposed urgency to ensure a clear calendar and clear skies.

As you can see in the photos, the only time we can see the entire sphere of Venus is when it's displayed as a silhouette against the Sun. Other times, because of its position among the planets and our vantage point here on Earth, Venus appears in phases, never full. This was an event I didn't want to miss and I was rewarded for my perseverance with images like the one below, taken with a camera attached to a telescope with a solar filter. Yes, that's the full sphere of Planet Venus. It still floors me.

Incidentally, Planet Mercury happens to transit the Sun more frequently than Venus but that's a hard one to catch without a telescope and a solar filter. The next transits are in 2019 and 2032.

We're constantly reminded that life goes on no matter our circumstances. Well, imagine the cosmos. That ever-churning cycle of birth, death and re-birth that goes on without us paying a single minute to it – until we make the time to do so. No matter how boring or exciting lying under the stars sounds to you, I hope that you take advantage of doing it at some point. It's worth taking a bit of your time to head away from city lights and lie under that quilt of tiny dots because once you put your worries and sense of self worth against such implausible expansiveness, you really start to get it. Fear and uncertainty give way to a calm surrender.

My concerns, worries and negative energy dissipate once I realize that there is so much out there that's infinitely bigger than I am. Yes, we will have our challenges and losses in life that a night under the stars won't heal right away, but the experience is always a welcome escape. It gives us a personal encounter with the thoughts and questions that try to answer the meaning of our very existence. Whether the experience is spiritual, religiously inspiring, or neither, at the very least it provides a comforting backdrop as we contemplate the little we are able to understand about the tiny space we occupy and often stress over.

Look up from time to time. You're not as big as you think you are.