AND dusk came, slowly the lights faded away into the night.
Your sense of fading light and time for that matter could be fast or slow if you mark it from civil dusk to nautical dusk, and finally astronomical dusk.
For photographers, civil dusk is the best time to capture the soft glow of the sunlight painting different shades of orange and red in the darkening sky, at sunset.
As the sun moves on below the horizon, it slowly becomes difficult to distinguish the sky from land or water. That period in time when sailors at sea could not rely on naturally availing light for navigation is called nautical dusk. The technical definition says that the Sun has moved to 12° below the horizon in the evening. It marks the end of nautical twilight, which begins at civil dusk. At this time, objects are less distinguishable, and stars and planets appear to brighten. Most stars and constellations are now visible to the naked eye.
Astronomical dusk is the official beginning of night time, the Sun is now 18 degrees below the horizon, and the last shimmer of daylight has left the sky. During this period, the sky may look completely dark.
Time has a way of moving ever slowly or quickly and but always, it catches you unaware of its passing in seconds, minutes, and years over a lifetime.
It was just yesterday that I was young, enjoying the warm sun and cool breeze in my parent’s home in the mines. My father is long gone now and my mom is aging fast. The sunny years of my youth seem to have passed on too quickly into my adult life with its hopes, dreams, happy and sad moments, now all fading into the twilight years of my time here in this planet.
Several questions come to mind as I confront this reality. If all the details and events of my life are happy and sweet yes, it would be fun and healthy to dwell and look at them a little longer. How did I get here? Where did the years go? What happened? Why did things happen as they did, among other questions? It was both a happy and sad life that I lived in.
Entering into a new season of life, not so vibrant and adventurous now, for the time being, retrospective, I am being helped to zoom out once in a while and laugh, a therapeutic way of handling the sharp colors of the memories of my existence.
The practice actually was suggested by Seneca, a major philosophical figure of the Roman Imperial Period. Thinking through his advice, I want to live what remains of my life, remembering all things, even the momentary but vexing and painful problems, because that is what they are - momentary, as part of the good and beautiful, before the lights are switched out.
“Draw further back and laugh,” Seneca said, and almost everything either becomes pleasant, if not absurd.
The lessons of history are proof that Seneca hit the mark right about zooming out and laughing at your problems. Our lives are but a spark in the infinity of time on a space rock. Looking closely at the sparks during the 18th Century, from where we are today, would you not laugh at how people seriously argued that the Earth was flat? How about the divine rights of kings, and the infallibility of the Popes?
World War 1 began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Today, for basically no reason, that is flimsy enough reason to plunge the whole world into war. If you look at the events of World War 2, it is even more stupid because a highly civilized people believed a mad man’s idea about their being the supreme race with him as overlord. Aside from fighting a war with every nation in Europe and later the world, to prove their point, they have to murder millions of innocent citizens and civilians because they are the scums of the Earth.
Life is a precious gift to every living creature. That outlook becomes sharper in a man’s twilight years. Even if people make him angry, with all possible kinds of evil and pain inflicted on his being, he will do something better before he responds. He will shy away, zoom out, and wait for a little bit, or he will do nothing. Those are the sanest responses to both situations. He weighs his actions so it will help prolong what remains of his life. The opposite has dire consequences to him, the people around him, and to his enemies.
With the remaining years of my life as a government operative, I find zooming out and thinking through some difficulties and problems being done best with a trip into the field as Abraham Lincoln did with the Union troops during the American Civil War.
Talking with the troops and the people gave him a sharper outlook on the future of America and how to govern it under a democracy.
I talk and write about our good projects for the farmer beneficiaries.
But visiting and talking with the farmers clarified to me some of the difficult problems they have with government projects and promoted technologies. Some are really good they make life for all longer. Some are bad and curses those involved. In some ways corruption can lead them to greater evils that can cut their lives short.
In all, our shared knowledge on the subject can put a smile on our faces when we meet, or make us laugh like crazy in the privacy of our thoughts.
I wish you all the healthy fun there is in the world. Life is precious but short. We could ill afford to waste it on greedy and supremacist pursuits at home, in the workplace, and abroad.