The Interplay Of Day and Night

I was returning back from my evening walk today and it got a tad late than usual. The birds were screeching back to their homes, stretching their wings as if in a great rush to retire for the day and almost instinctively I looked up at the sky. Random, stretched strokes of grey were beginning to splatter over the dimming blue length of the sky. The same floor of heaven which until a while ago was bright and clear... was as if being slowly gobbled by the forces of darkness.

It was almost metaphorical...striking in its comparison. How much life like this was! Clear, bright shades of life being consumed by strokes of grey and before you get time to realize or react...they have already begun to darken all horizons. Gradually and inconspicuously, the darker patches of the skies began to sprawl and the spaces of brighter hues began to crumble and shrink. As if moving in like a warning that...here I come, you can run as much as you try...but you cannot escape. The lighter shades gave up...succumbed...yielded to the greater force...the arms of the inevitable, that would embrace them to the point of complete crushing in its folds.

And there, right in front of my naked eyes, the spectacle unfolded...
The intermingling occurred...as the light blue and pristine white transformed to light greys, then purples and slowly to darker scares...to ultimately turn black...the colour of mourning....the essence in which everything loses its identity.

The glorious sun, which until a while ago, shone with its almighty exuberance was hidden behind the sordid influence of the foul. All the beauty of clarity was marred by the oneness of endless, smoky haze. Suddenly the previously welcoming green and soothing trees took up a menacing facade...and loomed ahead on the path like forbidding stumbling blocks....Shadows crept in silently and the daunting environment made me quicken my steps back home. The fear of the dark....the unknown makes us all grope with our outstretched hands. The screeching and twittering had stopped....the grinding of machines far away had come to a staggering halt and the vehicles rushing past on the roads thinned in number... their headlights playing a winding game on the face of the charcoaled lanes.

Yes, the day was done...the rays were gone....but simultaneously the moon also did rise to show there was sweetness even in sadness...and despite the intimidating envelope of thoughts...I consoled myself with the belief that tomorrow would come...the wheels of the natural cycle would turn as the roles would be reversed and darkness would then scamper to seek shelter. And I continued to walk on...

But once my vision had adjusted to it, the darkness itself was beginning to appeal too. This darkness has been there since even before the light was formed... For before the sun may have come into existence, what was there except darkness all around? If the day lights up the path...sometimes its exuberance can blind the vision...and everything appears bright and right on the surface. It is only at night that true forces come out to play...the shadows provide our eyes, the opportunity to rest and the coolness of shade balms the sores. The night tells us it is time to rest...to rejuvenate and be one within...for tomorrow would bring new pressures again. The night brings about stillness...so necessary for introspection...it brings us back home...so necessary to enable us to get up again the next day.

I reached my destination...my walk was done...so was my appreciation of life around me...the cycle of nature and the nature of human cycle...
May in this interplay of day and night, each one finds his true calling...each one delves into the essence of life itself.