Sunrise Sunset
One aesthetic experience that everyone, wherever they are around the world, has equal rights to enjoy is perhaps viewing and feeling the rising and the setting sun. And it has been so since the beginning of humanity. Sunrises and sunsets work to warm and calm the human senses.
At different times of the day, the sun strikes the human eye to be of different sizes. And the colors that surround this big ball of light also seem to vary; it’s vibrant red at daybreak, blazing red-orange towards dusk, with various shades of yellow in between. Yet, in fact, these illusions of size and color are simply the works of the earth’s distance from the sun at certain points of the day.
Another thing, the length of the shadows varies throughout the day – longest in the early mornings and late afternoons; shortest at noontime. Many times, one is seized in gazing at the colors of the sunlight or in seeing his own shadow; it makes him feel a certain way, every time.
There is actually nothing dramatic or emotionally ‘colorful’ about the sun and its movement. It is just nature at work. There is actually nothing intentionally artistic or sentimental happening on a cosmic level.
The sun does not really rise up in the horizon, nor does it go down at sunset. The sun stays where it is. It is the earth that spins around it, on a set axis and regular pace.
In truth, the sun isn’t actually doing anything it doesn’t do at any other time of day. Sunrises and sunsets are completely experiential – and the noontime sun, as well. It is people that give these times other meanings.
One’s experience of the sun is solely defined by the position one occupies on the earth’s surface, the angle from which he apprehends his surroundings. If he moves a couple hundred miles east or west, it’s not happening. And everyone perhaps understands this fact.
And yet, even with the present scientific knowledge, it can be difficult for one to accept that what he experiences at sunrise and sunset isn’t a cosmic phenomenon. And it would have been many times more difficult for people of ancient times marveling at these incandescent displays. That sense of awe and wonder must have been ingrained in the minds of all humanity, to emotionally remind everyone that there is more to earthly life than meets the eye.
In a similarly way, there is an aspect of the experience that is determined by where one is standing at a particular moment, physically and metaphorically. Like a particular music, for example, does not strike everyone the same way every time, sunrises and sunsets feel differently to different people at different times and in different places.
The sunrise comes to rouse up the senses so that one may brim with hope and enthusiasm for the day ahead. And then… the sunset, momentarily blazing with remnants of the day’s various pursuits, slowly lulls down the senses for the night’s rest. And tomorrow awaits to repeat the cycle.