It's all about sunsets really

Since my 50th Birthday I've been wondering about the meaning of life and what it's all about and really really searching for meaning in all of this and a sign that my time here is worth it and what makes it worth it and the hope that I've made a difference, and what does that mean anyway.  It's been a fairly fruitless search full of never ending circles coming back to the starting point again and again.  No answers, not even a sniff of one.  This quest has been all the more confused by the appearance of cancer just before my 51st Birthday.

So I was looking out of the window this weekend and I took this photo.  It's a great window onto our back garden, which is south facing, so we get lots of sun and a beautiful view of the sunset.

 

And I realised that it's all about sunsets really.

When the sun sets, it's the end of the day for most people and with it the satisfaction that the sun has come up and now it's going down and you've survived, lived, endured, enjoyed, another day.  The daylight hours have come and gone and you are still here to greet the night time.  The day might have been really amazing full of wonderous, exciting things - you may have won the lottery, had a baby, handed in an assignment at last, broke the world record for something, cooked a delicious meal, swam the Channel, married a Prince, hugged your children tightly.  Or the day might have been a really terrible one - you might have got the flu, someone you loved might have died, you won the silver medal instead of the gold, broken your leg, been cheated on by your lover, you might have found out that you had breast cancer.

Or your day might have been just satisfactory - the kids got to school on time, you finished the thing you wanted to finish at work, you had a pleasant meeting with your boss, the homework was done not too brilliantly but done, the train was almost on time and wasn't too packed, you tidied the house, made an reasonably healthy meal, did a little sport - just mundane stuff, not great but not terrible.

But at the end of the day, the sunset marks the end to all of those days good, bad or mediocre and time moves on, the sun slips away, sometimes in a glorious show, sometimes very discreetly without you noticing it.  And it is gone.  The day is done, you've lived the hours that the sun gave to you - maybe in distress, maybe in glory or happiness or just in a contented way.  But whatever way those hours panned out, they are gone and the sunset is here to mark the end.  It's non-negotiable and it's the one constant thing all of us living on this planet share.

And that's life I think.  The human condition is that we just want to see another sunset, to know that we have the potential to live yet another day and when it is is done with all the myriad of potential that the day brings, we did it, we got to the end and we're watching that sun slip down the sky with a feeling that whatever happened, the day is done, we've achieved what we achieved, we've lived what we have lived.

And the glorious anticipation that there's another wonderful day tomorrow.