I just noticed that another turning of the earth has brought me back to facing the sun. It is morning. It is, for me, another time of facing the sun, another day by common reckoning.
Morning has arrived yet again, the earth still spins on its axis, the sun burns with vigor and amazing gusto, and I am once again finding myself in the midst of this wonder-filled dance of sun and planet. I have to experience another day.
As I get older, I am beginning to think more about the finite number of mornings I get to experience. My mornings have some kind of apparent limit. I can calculate exactly how many mornings have come and gone for me, and are no longer part of my short life. I have no way of reckoning how many more mornings are yet to come for me. Their number, however, could be counted,
Would it make a difference if the earth spun a little bit faster or a bit more slowly? Would that affect the number of mornings in my life? Or is my body and all of its mysterious rhythms so connected to the turning of the earth toward the sun that any change in the earth’s speed would have no effect on my number of days. Perhaps there would be no change in the number of times that the sun would appear above me, my body functions are so tuned to the rhythm of the spinning earth.
Even my sense of time and the passing of time is so tied to my experience of the appearance of the sun. Time is so subjective and speed so relative that I might not even notice a change if the speed of the earth’s spin would change. Perhaps my reckoning of my weight would change, and also my counting of my mornings.
But I might not really notice a difference because my whole world would have shifted its references. Morning is such a benchmark for my life and my experience of living. The benchmark, however, is flexible and likely illusory.
It is exciting to be part of this wonderful rhythm, the turning of the earth and the reappearance of the sun. I am aware that it might be daily marking off the days that I live, and that is a somber task of the sun. But the morning greeting I give and receive with the sun is still a thrilling experience..
It is an experience I want to be immersed in and absorbed into. I want to be aware what it is like to be an intimate part of this celestial exchange between the earth and the sun. I also want to be aware of its illusory nature.
I want more to be fully aware of each new morning as a gift that is infinite in measure. I want the morning to remind me of the illusion I have of time. I want the experience of my morning to erase, or at least blur, the significance of the illusory limit of my number of mornings.
I look forward to each morning being the messenger of wonder and joy.