It is 7:52 AM on Sunday January 30th, 2022. I’m sitting in my la-Z-Boy recliner in the second floor reading nook. The rising sun illuminates this small space with a young light promising a beautiful day.
For the past decade I have preferred the early morning to late at night. The start of a day easily serves as a metaphor for life. When the day is young it is full of promise, of endless possibilities and excitement. The air is fresh and cool with a shimmering dew covering the grass, a wetness signaling a new birth. The bright morning sun seems full of boundless energy, lighting up the world but not yet strong enough to burn.
By midday we are for the most part committed to our early morning decisions where changing the course of the day can be accomplished but now takes effort and perhaps abandoning what we’ve begun earlier in the day. The dew on the grass has long since dried up and although the sun provides light it is no longer those young, playful morning rays. The midday sun is one which lets us see which choices we’ve made very clearly and it’s power has the potential to burn. It shines down directly upon us exposing us for all we are good and bad. Gone are the days when we could easily hide in the shadows of those larger than us, or being exposed, is a light full of love, understanding, patience and forgiveness. Exposure to the midday sun does not forgive, you must make the proper preparations to enjoy what it has to offer.
By the evening the story of the day has already been written. One can try to begin something new but it will only ever be an adventurous footnote which most will never bother to read. The sun’s light steadily grows weaker and the world seems much less clear. Its rays no longer have the power to burn, or even warm, but instead offer a setting for reflection.
The sunset comes in many forms. It is something most would love to see should they make time and plans to do so. Those who know how to live life will take time to go sit at a nice spot and watch the sun go down peacefully as they reflect on the day and a life well-lived. For others the realization that the day has ended and did not go as planned will cause great sadness. I have seen a lonely woman crying at sunset in her car as it slowly faded below the ocean horizon. Some never will see the sunset; they’ve walked through life in a mist and one day life just ends. For others, they simply don’t make the time. They fill their lives with activities always trying to avoid being alone with themselves. Although the midday sun exposes us to the outside world, the evening light exposes us to ourselves.
One never knows what the final sunset will be. We all hope it will be beautiful but it can just as easily be a great disappointment as a fog could roll in and we don’t see any sunset at all. However, if we have lived the day well and enjoyed ourselves, paying attention to all the beauty while we had the chance, we have done well no matter what the final sunset looks like.
