These days I feel that I have safely closed off one chapter of my life and moved onto the next. I can feel it in my body, it’s a calmness that I can always reach for. Some days it comes easy, other days it’s difficult, but I know that it’s always there. Especially at sunrise. This morning, I woke up, and my head is bursting full of ideas so I write. Time goes quickly before I start to feel the familiar itch to drink my first coffee of the day. As I got up to start the coffee maker, I take a second to open the curtains. It was still dark outside, but I left it slightly open anyway, it helps to introduce the frosty air into my apartment slowly rather than all at once. After I pour my coffee and sit down to write again, something catches my eye. In between the curtains, I see a strip of deep orange colour and I realise that the sun is about to rise. I look at my work, and then I look back out at the sky and a decision is made. I close my laptop, turn off all the lights and open the curtains fully.
I sit and watch the sky change colours from the darkness of my room, the comfort of my chair. These days, I’m starting to feel the dust settle. The fog is fading in my mind, as it’s rising in the air during the cold winter months. I am starting to feel more grateful these days for what I have, and I always feel luckiest in the morning when I can watch the colours of sunrise slowly disperse. From a smoky red line emerges fingers of orange, like flames reaching up and fading into yellow… burning white at its tips for a brief moment before merging into a blue and black sky from the passing night. I take a moment to look around my empty apartment. I don’t have much, but at the same time, I have so much more than most others. I have this sunrise in front of me, a place to be warm and food on my table. A sound comes to my ears, one that I heard while I was in Switzerland, and I reach for my phone to try and find it again. I am successful.
As I sit in my chair, in the background I listen to a traditional Swiss men’s choir called the Schötze-Chörli Stein (you can watch them by clicking here). I learned about it when my friend in Switzerland showed me one night. The harmonies sounded so beautiful… unlike anything I’d heard before. It somehow seems perfect to watch the sun rise with this music in the background. I imagine that the farmers of Switzerland, people who are so important to the country, probably get up early and hopefully watch the sunrise themselves in between all of their hard work. The voices seem to be calling out to something, it feels like they are stretching the colours of the sky apart and gently coaxing the sun to come out from his hiding place. To cover the land with its life-giving warmth and cheery glow. I couldn’t help but imagine that this was true, as I watched the rays of the sun filter through the mountainside. It made me realise just how much we take this for granted. We can be so consumed by the events happening in our lives, seemingly so dramatic and painful, that we forget the sun rises for us every day. Every morning, and every evening, the movement of the sun along the horizon is a gift. A time when we can feel that we need not let the events of our lives overwhelm us so much as they often do.
As the sun gets closer to the horizon, its rays of light exposes the mountainside and reveals all of her dips and folds. I feel enlarged by the time I have taken to be in the present moment this morning, as if I could just brush my hands over the surface of this mountain and pick up the little houses like tiny boxes. If I had not gone to Switzerland so many times, and learned about the culture there, then this morning would have been just another sunrise. Special perhaps, but not in this particular way. I realise that I need not be ashamed that I don’t have a car, or that I don’t have a house filled with many things in my possession. My memories, and the things that I have taken the time to learn over the years from my travels… these are my treasures. I cannot show them off, like paintings on a wall or fancy gadgets in a kitchen, but I can share them with people who take the time to get to know me. Just like others have shared these things with me, because although I may not have always had money or things to give, I have always been generous with my time and my attention. Gifts that give as much to the listener as to the person speaking. Treasures that I can always take with me, wherever I go.
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