The Promise of Sunrise

“May every sunrise hold more promise, and every sunset hold more peace.” That is an anonymous blessing on a “quotable magnet” my wife and I purchased some years ago at a gift shop near what was then close to “ground zero” of the former World Trade Center in New York City. The blessing touched us sufficiently to buy it and put it on our refrigerator door, and have taken it to heart over the years.

How many of our mornings hold promise for the day ahead? I had a conversation with a friend the other day, who confessed that he felt as if each day was pretty much like the one before it. He said he felt as if he were in a rut, running on a treadmill, going nowhere while exhausting himself. To this I said, “Been there, done that.” I suppose most of us can identify with this man’s sense of being in a rut, of being stuck in repetitive days of boring predictability.

It can sure be depressing to feel as if we are glued to sameness, rather like how music records used to get stuck on the same lyrics, forcing us to hear the same few words and music over and over again, until we were able to get to the phonograph and move the needle forward – to where it would hopefully not get stuck again.

As I told this friend, after sharing that I have been “rut-bound” before, every day is in fact different and new. We just need to look for it, be ready for the unexpected and the novel, the stranger and the strange, when they show themselves. No day is ever really the same, and even if we feel as if we are the same as we were yesterday, that is not quite true. Question: are you the same person you were a year ago? Six months ago? Surely not exactly. You are in perpetual transition, as your body continuously ages; expected and unexpected events and circumstances impact you in ways both sensed and not sensed.

Therefore, if and as you are able to risk faith in the yet-to-be-revealed promise of each new day, depressing clouds of sameness will part and the warming sun of the “could-be” will show its hope-driven face. Such faith energizes and prepares you to at the very least, enjoy the precious non-repeatable gift of that day.

I believe that a day which ends in beauty will likely dawn in hope. And further, that a day which ends in hope will likely dawn in peace. And how many sunsets find us in a state of peace? For most of us, far too few. We fret, worry and obsess about this or that, what happened today, what could happen tomorrow. We let in the demons of the “what-ifs” which harass us with the warning: “You’d better get ready, just in case.” So we find ourselves putting on our armor at the very hour we should be doing just the opposite: removing all armor and protectiveness, so we can at last find some rest in the shadows.

To attain peace, you must let go of, detach yourself from, the stresses and strains of daily life, and enter the release of an ending day. Risk believing that sunrise will hold promise for a better day. Hold on to that belief, and it will most often prove true by the end of the day.