The Sun Always Rises

Consider this.

A scraggly line, more like an arc. Its  form still invisible in the darkness.

Yet we wait, steeped in patience, for its faint edge to appear.

And appear it does. Slowly at first, almost surprisingly.

A shimmer from behind thick clouds brings it into sharper focus.

The shimmer revealing an imprecise, fuzzy-edged blur of undecided colors.

Colors for today – which may differ from tomorrow’s and, certainly, yesterday’s.

We cannot know the exact formation that will emerge from behind that arc. Your guess is as good as mine. Better we should both be surprised, no?

That pulsating orb will leave people gaping, breathless, speechless even.

It will make even the most cynical among us stop and stare.

It will mend disagreements and broken hearts.

It will, stunningly, give one reason to forgive.

It will birth love, musical stanzas, song lyrics, secrets long untold. Hands will be held.

It will give us all pause.

We will greet the rising sun if we have slept well (or not), if we have lost a dear one, if we have married or divorced, if we have traveled far from home or if we are in our backyards.

We will marvel at the sun, and be grateful that it returns each morning, at a predictable hour, as if it were a Swiss train arriving precisely on time.

We will not ourselves be able to articulate reasons for such wild devotion and doe-eyed adoration.

But we will nevertheless be humbled by the sight.

As if we were all addicts of the light, we will crave another hit, returning the next day and the next – forever more if we only could, to witness the magnificent element stage its daily improvised light show, as if it were on a lifetime run, maybe like Celine Dion singing each evening and for many years at Caesars even if no two shows can ever be alike.

When we lay down our tech-toys, to sip, perhaps, a cup of tea at water’s edge, we will know in our hearts that, with all the world’s troubles behind and ahead of us, this sun, the very same one that rises each and every day, in the east and sets in the west, will make us rise as well, like  a compass pointing us towards the next day, reassuring us that it will never, not even in a million years, let us down.

Tell me friends… do you stop for the sun?