Homo heliotropus

I got caught in a lop-sided game of freeze tag a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I was disadvantaged by a combination of Irish heritage and too many formative years of unprotected sun exposure. Because my opponent was a dermatologist with a spray can of liquid nitrogen, I didn’t stand a chance. The final score was 12 to zero.

The sun is a fickle friend. It feels relaxing to lift the face skyward on a winter day and feel our star’s warmth. It burns like fire to have a dermatologist squirt liquid nitrogen onto the same face decades later because too many skyward face lifts have caused changes in adult skin known as ‘actinic keratoses’. Pre-cancer spots.

Is this the way of the true heliotrope? Yes, the sun can be too much of a good thing for any living being – animal, plant or otherwise. Flowers, for example, even those with the most beautiful blooms that open and turn to the east each morning, can be withered by shadeless exposure in the heat of a summer afternoon. Still, you would think that evolution would have worked in human favor, at least a little bit, over these many thousands of years. Despite our racial differences, you would think that turning our cheeks to the sun to feel its warmth would not wreak havoc on cells that won’t be born for decades.

Not so. The sun is good on the skin for vitamin D. The sun is good on the skin for warmth. The sun is bad on the skin for tanning. The sun can seer itself into the memory banks of the largest human organ’s future.

Sure, skin cancer risk is different based on race. And that difference is caused by evolutionary variations in sun exposure. Nonetheless, there is still risk. All humans can be burned by the sun. Any type of human skin can turn cancerous.

Health professionals tell us to cover up. Hats, clothing, protective creams, remaining indoors during mid-day – the best medicine is avoidance. Duck and cover. Adult cancer risk is increased by the cumulative exposure from, and the unfortunate burns of, our youth. And yet fresh air is good. Playing outside is healthy. We send our children and ourselves into nature as a matter of course.

It is one of the odd inconsistencies of life. Good things, such as the sun, must be experienced in the right dosing. As advanced by Aristotle, moderation – the golden mean, the middle way – is ideal. Extremes are to be avoided. Extremes are not only undesirable but are hazardous, to individual and collective health, to wellbeing, and to virtue.

It is a difficult lesson to learn, moderation – one that often takes a lifetime to absorb. And that learning comes in phases. Throughout our years, many of us ping-pong across the experience spectrum, finding the center only through frequent and, sadly, predictable swings through life’s highs and lows, its lefts and rights, its ups and downs. Gradually, we gauge our path, after veering first this way, and then that. Eventually, if we are fortunate to survive the vicissitudes of time and our stubborn resistance to its teachings, we find a semblance of the mean, of balance.

The irony that damage from previous sunburns is treated with tiny, manufactured frostburns is not lost on me. Nor have I missed the message from my recent freeze tag trouncing. Avoid the dermatologist tomorrow by enjoying heliotropic moments in moderation today.

The rules of the homo heliotropus game are stacked against the unwary heliotrope. Icarus learned this, in Greek mythology. Although equipped with wings, he had been warned not to fly too close to the sun. But Icarus was too proud or too foolhardy. He refused to soar in the middle space between sun and sea. As a result, his wings melted and his flying days abruptly ended.

Perhaps there is a reason humans aren’t able to directly look at the sun or bask in carefree style beneath its warmth. Our evolutionary potential lies elsewhere. We have the ability to learn satisfaction from self-discipline and self-control.

To be a heliotrope is not to be the sun.