Rising with the Sun

Over the last few weeks I’ve been waking up at a reasonably early time, a little before 7am. This is also the time of year when, in the Northern hemisphere, the days are starting to get longer, with sunrise happening earlier and sunset happening later. Together these mean that I’ve been awake just as the sun has been making it’s way up past the horizon. Right now, I’m grateful to be living in an apartment with large north-facing windows that look out onto some woods, where the trees are still brown with their branches empty, and there’s still a gradually diminishing layer of snow on the ground. And so, my mornings have been starting with the sun come up and gradually painting the trees varying shades of brown, yellow and gold. Paired with a cup of coffee and a good read, it’s been a very centering way of starting the day.

One of the few good things to have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the normalization of remote work, which means that more often that not I don’t have to rush out the door in the morning. Being able to slow start the morning in this way has been really nice, and will definitely be something I miss if we go back to a more normal mode of work.

My experience of the mornings have been made sharper by the knowledge that this experience is temporary and fleeting (I suppose a few years of meditation and reading about Buddhism is starting to leave tracks in the brain). Each day’s light show is over in a few minutes, but also, even now the sun rises early enough that I miss the first, most golden painting of the trees. Soon, I’m going to be missing it entirely. By the time my lease is up in June, the trees will be more green than brown, and the days will be more filled with light than not. But perhaps by then, I would have found a different way to brighten up my morning routine.