Gratuitous Beauty

It happens everyday: sunset. Each day it is unique. It spreads itself across the sky in technicolor, taking a mere 13.8 billion years to arrive in exactly this form at my doorstep. I snapped this shot, then another and another and another, a few weeks ago. It was a fluke that I even noticed, looked up from my computer at the right moment to find the world outside my living room window had been transformed. I let it pull me away from my screen.

Unlike the prints that hang on my walls, this work of art was living, changing from moment to moment to moment. I was torn between a desire to abandon the camera entirely so I could better lean into the miracle, and a desire to preserve it all, for it was so extraordinary. What strikes me today, when the fog is so heavy that chances of a sunset viewing are nil, is that this perfection happens each day, and over my lifespan I can count on my fingers the number of times that I have actually thought to go and seek it out, wait for it, receive its gifts.

Each day, this blaze of glory, this mystery and magic, will occur in a way that is completely independent of my needs, preferences or any volition of my own. It offers itself up, as the entire universe does, moment by moment. There are no "bad moments," but there are certainly moments I do not choose to notice because I am lost in thought, lost in worry or fear, or even lost dreaming up some reality preferable to the one I am inhabiting. The sunset is there, whether I notice or not. The fog will creep up the canyon, whether I put down my book to watch or not. The hawk will catch an updraft and disappear over the hilltop, whether I give it my attention or not.

I believe the world offers itself to our imagination. It holds out its hands to us, full of gifts, saying "And these are all for you." Each moment is an invitation to join the banquet, yet I starve myself on scraps of stale bread, oblivious to the groaning table set before me. Today, my calling, my reminder to myself, is to receive the moment before me, rather than trading it in on a fabricated moment in my mind. Every moment is an entry point. In Rumi's words: The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.

#newyear #resolutions #old