Sunrise

Today I watched the sunrise. I don’t know why, but today I felt like I should be there. To see the sun streak across the horizon filling the new day with its golden light, chasing away all of the fears of the night before. I watched as it slowly crossed its way over the treetops glistening and golden. The bluish tint of the sky grew lighter and lighter as I watched… it seemed to beckon to me, telling me the secrets of the world. I felt compelled to watch as the light rose from the deepest pits of the night. The hands of darkness seemed to reach out and fade as the sun drove them back. The sunrise seemed to take longer than I expected, washing away all of the fear and doubt I was holding in my body…

You must never judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins… This phrase hit me as I watched the sun leak across the sky. Why would someone want to spend time in the night of someones life, when the day was so glorious? When the fear and doubt of the moon clawed its way from the depths and controlled the soul and body? Why not see someone’s life in the light? I wish I would have wanted to see the sunrise earlier in my life, maybe I would feel differently. Maybe I would be able to forgive myself.

As the sky gradually began to lighten I felt a fear. I felt that if I didn’t see the gradual change in time that I would somehow miss out on an important lesson. I feel like I should be here, in this moment, watching the sunrise, as if for the first time. I don’t remember any sunrise before this one, and in a way I regret that. I wish I could remember feeling this way before but somehow I don’t believe I have.

I don’t know why I suddenly got up from my bed to watch the sunrise. I don’t know why I feel I have to write this, maybe its because I know something now, that I didn’t know before. Maybe now I am open to seeing things as they are not as they should or could have been. Even as the claws of sleep bat at me, I am forced to watch the sky lighten… like I am forced to unlearn some lesson from long ago, but somehow over the passage of time I had forgotten.

I had once told someone that I was a night person...but now I am unsure. The trees are not alive in the night, the flowers petals are closed to the assailing darkness. I am not a night person. I was meant to live and walk in the day time. So is everyone else. I cannot live my life in the dark. And I cannot live in a cage. That is where I was. In a cage, housed and treated as an animal.

The birds sing their songs to the light, beckoning its rays to caress their lives. To some it signals the passing of another day, to others it signals the birth of a new time. I am not sure which I believe at the moment, but I do know that right now, where I am is where I am supposed to be. All around me the animals know that dawn is coming. They rise and scurry about, welcoming the passing of the night. For some it is a relief, that they have made it through without succumbing to predators, for others it is a time of rest.

The time will pass slowly for some, and more quickly for others, but time is relative. The phases of the sun and moon stay the same, with utter clarity. They are consistent however. They always follow the same paths, the same time frame. Its that simple fact that is so comforting to so many...