RESERVING THE SUNRISE

It's Sunday night, and for the past four days I woke up at 5:45 am unable to fall back asleep. There was nothing on my mind keeping me awake, just an eagerness to be in the world.

And so, I walked. 

There is no greater illusion than New York City at 5:45 am on Saturday or Sunday morning, when normally frequented places of volume and mass are vacated and black. And the loudest sound is that of the street cleaning trucks that flow through the streets once a day doing what will be undone in just a few short hours. And the only people that exist are the garbagemen, the homeless, those that sell fruit at the fruit stands, and those that keep the 24/7 shops going - for us, for them. 

I walked at 5:45 am and eventually the sun started to rise and rays and sunbeams of tangerine and scarlet started bleeding out of the sky and into the trees, and when I got to it, the water of East River. I felt so lucky that I couldn't sleep and was overwhelmed with the beauty of it all. And in my deepest heart of hearts, I briefly got upset wondering why the world was created so that so many people miss the sunrise. 

As the sky began to turn a dull shade of blue/grey, all those people who I had been awake with just two hours earlier were joined by everyone else. And I watched the way they moved through life. People. People like me, walk by a thousand beautiful things a day and never notice. We're just busy and living. 

So I came to a conclusion: Maybe the sunrise is reserved for those who deserve it most. For all those people who are awake at 5:45 am putting in motion the day for the rest of us - the garbagemen, and coffee shop owners, and street cleaners. Maybe it's reserved for those without a home or the wanderers of the night who can't sleep at all. 

Those people, at least, have one thing that the rest of the world doesn't have… 

a daily reservation to the sunrise.