This photo was taken out an airplane window on a Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago, when I was flying west from Atlanta to San Antonio. It is taken with my smartphone and is not really all that sharp or clear, but it does capture that which was essential in that moment. I continue to be fascinated by these views of sunset from the air, and it is worth flying west at sunset just for the hours of quiet contemplation it affords me.
It occurred to me that in some ways this is the way we often look at life. There is the dark area below the line of light, an area filled with tasks and obligations and all the things we feel we have to do in order to live a good life. Above that, and all too often unreachable, is the ever-strived for me time, that part of ourselves we wish we could fulfill if we could only find the right balance. In this scenario, the line of light would be that all too elusive, and constantly fading, line of balance.
However, I increasingly think this view of life is. short-sighted and does not really serve us well. There is no balance in life, not in the reality of this corporeal life we lead, only compromise and acceptance. That doesn't mean that life can't be good, but it does mean that the myth of the ideal, of perfection, of having it all, is exactly that, a myth. Designing your life in search of a myth breeds unahppiness, but to some extent modern life seems to be a life that focuses more on unhappiness than joy and acceptance. We are bombarded with messages aimed at wanting us to achieve more, do more, want more, messages that imply that whereever you are, it is not enough. All too often we push on, always striving, always failing to reach the unreachable horizon.
What you cannot see in the photo, but I could see from the plane, is that one can make out some glimmer of the world below through the cloud cover. It is not clear but it is visible. It struck me that this view of the world, as through a semi-opaque layer of clouds, is how we actually see life. We never see clearly, although we think we do. We never really know enough, we never fully understand other people's motives and backgrounds, we don't know what will happen next, and most of the time we don't even really know and understand our own motives, understand what it is that will really make us happy. We think we know, but we are often proved wrong.
But if our view of the world is shadowed, our true selves still exist in love and light. In fact I would venture so far as to say that the true self is Love and as such this true self is always light and clear and unclouded, even though we perhaps are not always as in touch with our true selves as we might wish to be. I might say that this love is what we are meant to be. If you are Christian you might say that we are created to be love, but regardless of one's belief, of one's understanding of who we are and how we came to be, I would argue that love is still our goal and our true nature. There has been scientific evidence that we are communal and caring beings, that all human brains respond to love, that certain kinds of good deeds prompt specific responses in all human brains, regardless of culture or background.
And so, if we see the world but darkly, and our true selves yearn for love, in fact yearn to be fulfilled in love, what is this line of light? Perhaps the line of light is our path, our true path, the balance, or pivot between our true selves (love) and earthly uncertainty. We can choose to live our lives purely in terms of wordly success, striving for career, money, power, things or we can seek out our true selves. The line of light is our path, should we chose to accept it, of seeking out love, of letting our true light shine within our lives, of finding balance between the spiritual and the temporal, because truly we cannot live without both.
But, you might say, isn't sunset a fading of the light? Isn't sunset the harbinger of darkness? Again I believe this is a shadowed view. Heading toward sunset, the light always lies ahead, a symbol of this meeting of sense and soul. But even then, this line of light is not a firm line, a sharp division, but a process. The line of light grows begins darkly, near the line of the horizon, near the apparent meeting with the earth, and grows more intense before fading into brightness, before meeting the true self. Remember that sunset is not merely the end of light, the setting of the sun, for every sunset is also a dawn, simultaneously, in some other part of the world. It is not an end, but a moving circle, a circle of life, a path which is ours to choose.
