SUNSET
Wikipedia Commons
I love the simple order of the universe.
Every dawn features a glow through my east-facing window unless fog blankets the street. Sometimes color low to the horizon is deep pink, magenta. Other days it's muted, delicate. When all I see is misty gray, I'm confident the sun still shines beyond the fog, even though I can't view it.
On clear evenings, if I walk one block to the crest of my hill I see shades of pink splayed before me.
For years this daily rhythm of sunrise and sunset, no matter the dramas of my own life or that of my country, has been a reliable grounding. It's like the gravity that connects me to earth and tugs at my skin.
The regularity of these cycles has promised stability day after day, except in the weeks after my second parent, my mother, died. Then, without the shelter of either parental tree, I felt as though gravity itself had wobbled. Lost in grief I floated, adrift untiI I reoriented to the new landscape and regained my footing. Gravity, it turned out, had remained intact, although I had been unable to perceive its reassuring presence.
All the predictable patterns of nature that embed us, like sun risings and seasonal rotations, show me that despite our occasional unreliable sense data the universe is an orderly home. Birds migrate at the same time each year, following strict annual cycles. We depend on forecasted ocean tides.
We know every cool fall will deepen into winter, followed by the inevitable rebirth of spring. We understand that when October leaves decay, crumbling on their return to earth, we needn't mourn. The bare dead-looking trees are very much alive, perhaps enjoying a resting state. Soon sap will flow and buds will reappear, sprinkling branches with their red sprouts.
But in October when we see no sign of renewal, only faith assures us that our planet will keep rotating the sun, and our tilted axis will bring April sunshine. Soon these dormant plants will burst with growth.
Similarly, as random cruelty strikes our ICE-patrolled-streets and safety nets like health care shred, the order of the human world can be hard to discern. Yet we are made of the identical elements as oceans and rocks. We are all stardust transformed. Ancient stars, when they disintegrated, provided the dust forming everything here. A pailful of dirt, my siblings, and I are all versions of the same material: stardust created over eons, scattered until it became soil—or people. The old Roman word for human, homo, came from the Latin for dirt, humus, showing our intimate connection.
So why would we believe that humans, with bodies 60-70% water just like the planet's, don't exhibit the patterns we see everywhere else?
Whether we look at the immense timespan of rock erosion or a Monarch Butterfly's annual migration, regular rhythms rule this planet. Nature's creatures follow unvarying sequences, from California salmon struggling upstream at spawning season to the valiant Artic Tern's annual sixty thousand mile migration.
Our human cells are likewise inherently attuned to natural cycles. As diurnal animals, for instance, we are most active during sunlight hours and ignore this tendency at our peril. Night-shift workers often develop physical symptoms classed as Shift Work Sleep Disorder, due to circadian rhythm disruption.
Civilizations and nations are also cyclical. Our own society's current collapse may be part of a natural pattern, with a mad wannabe king doing history's necessary work. As a predatory economy wobbles we see a more collaborative public emerge, especially visible this year in Minneapolis' and other cities' powerful help-thy-neighbor cultures.
Empires rise and fall, like seasons rotating. Still, the process of falling creates a crisis, opening a vacuum. The Chinese word for crisis has two characters: danger and pivot point (potential). The duality reminds us that though major change can be frightening, on the other hand we get to be alive at a moment calling out for birth doulas. For at last when the old empire crumbles into dust, some new civilization always takes its place.
What are we going to create?