OUTLOOK

What most people don’t realize is that you can’t change your mood.  There, I said it.

You can try, of course, but the all-warming cheer brought on by the presence of the sun can’t be pretended or manufactured.  Poor attempts only draw a starker contrast with the reality.  It is a far better thing that falls through my window today than the grey haze of these past weeks.  I don’t just see it – I feel it in my core.

How do they stand it in the north, where the sun vanishes for weeks, months?  In theory, it would be fine.  It couldn’t be as bad as all that, could it?  But the experience of it will send you out of your mind, lost in imagining a brighter world, brighter time, brighter outlook.  The sunless folk must stumble around in a stupor.  It’s no way to live.

It is unexpected to be so elated at the presence of shadows, but I find them beautiful in an unprecedented way.  Their crisp outlines, businesslike in their sharpness, tell me the strength of the light source.  An old friend has returned, and they are his emissaries, sent ahead to herald his return.  I have welcomed them in state, given them all the fanfare I can muster.  All light is not created equal; this kind is life-giving.  It does not just dispel darkness: it brings its own joy.

With such enticement spreading in at the window, getting out of bed is the happiest moment of the day.  The prospect of going out into that warmth is the only provocation I need.