In between five to seven o’clock p.m., I have decided to look at the sky.
This is the time when people usually leave work, pack up their things and clock out. It’s the end of the day of doing tedious work, a break from the adult life. They couldn’t wait to go home to their wife and kids, pets, secret-and-not-so-secret lovers, or simply their bed.
But I have decided that this is the time when I find the highest peak or an open space to look at the sky.
I find it overwhelming, how a series of blues and purples and oranges can make you fill with awe and wonder. It’s not just one shade of blue, it has light and dark. It’s not just one shade of purple, it has periwinkle, lavender, a hint of pink. It’s not just one shade of orange, it has yellow and red and burning. And they all mix up into what could have been a mess, but it was such a beautiful mess that I just can’t stop looking. I wonder how it feels, how it tastes like even. I wonder how it was possible for something so chaotic to look like a work of art. If you’re lucky, and find an open space, a really open space– say a penthouse or a mountaintop– you get to see the sun setting on one side and the moon setting its pace on the other. Being in the middle of it feels majestic, like being in two worlds, two places at once.
Mindy Kaling said, ‘There is no sunrise so beautiful for me to wake up and see it’, and honestly I couldn’t agree more. So I settled with sunsets. And to me, it always symbolized endings. The end of the day, the end of work.
I hated endings though. They’re always messy. And then you are left there with all the crap, stuck in the moment, wondering what to do next. Especially with yourself.
You would ask, with great confusion:
What now?
What do I do?
What about me?
But the thing about endings was that at every end, there is a new beginning. How your time at work would end and start your time for yourself or others. Endings, turned out, are beginnings of something new.
So you have to say to yourself:
This is now. Embrace it.
Do what you must do to start again.
You have the power in your hands to be okay. Maybe not better, but okay.
I always thought I was better with endings than beginnings, but turns out I was good with both after all.
So between five and seven o’clock p.m., I have decided to look at the sky to remind me that endings are also beginnings. And they can be a beautiful mess. And that I can always, always start again.
Airah Writes 