Walking helps. 

 I don’t mean performing the act of moving your legs in a manner that allows you to move forward per se, but more the where of it. After hearing my mother’s constant warnings of Vitamin D deficiency from being cooped up in the house every day, I eventually managed to bring myself to embrace the outdoors. At first, I was hesitant. Aside from not really buying into the whole Vitamin D deficiency thing, I didn’t believe leaving the house without a  purpose was necessary, the sweltering heat just further falling in my favour. If meeting a friend was out of the question and I had everything I needed indoors, what was the point? But, I went out anyways, particularly after a random pain in my bones seemed to be of a slight cause for alarm. 

The thing about sunsets is that it’s only in that moment do you feel yourself enraptured by awe, unable to describe why or how something could produce such a great sense of the sublime. It’s a simple phenomenon as old as time itself, yet its existence in this day and age still remains a reason to stop and stare. It should be of no surprise, yet it is. Perhaps it is hard to believe that despite everything going on at that very moment, despite the daily sinister happenings, there is still beauty. Beauty that is here to stay, beauty that we can cling on to for assurance that all is not yet lost. 

For me, sunsets stood mostly as a reminder. There was something magnificent about the way they arrived every day, the swirling hues of pink and orange splattered defiantly against the slowly darkening blue. They reminded me that nature still went on, even if we were put on hold.

That life wasn’t done with us just yet, even if we were just about done with what it had come to.

 Perhaps what struck me as especially relieving was realising my own insignificance against the grander workings of the universe. The universe continued to operate at its own pace, a global pandemic, amongst other disastrous happenings, of no relevance to its plan. Behind the demonstrations of unfortunate events, our world, the one as we knew it, still existed, still exists. In an age where doomsday talks aren’t quite as humorous as they should be, were we foolish to think it was that simple for us to cause the end of the world as we know it?  Maybe. Maybe all we needed was to have a little faith, to believe that this too, shall pass.

The thing about sunsets is that they’re always there, you just need to make an active effort to see them. Some days feel entirely hopeless, spent drifting from room to room in the hopes of something fortuitous to occur. Circumstances are blamed and tears are spilled, but eventually, you just start to feel a bit empty. 

It’s like a persistent ache you’ve seemingly become accustomed to so that it’s reduced to a dull throbbing, barely noticeable. Absolutely nothing is appealing anymore, to a point where even wallowing in sorrow feels overdone. 

And then you stumble upon a sunset, when you’re least looking for or expecting it. 

The thing about sunsets is that witnessing one in the flesh, after months of hopeless disorientation, while surrounded by the uproarious laughter of children and the balmy breezes of late summer is like snapping out of a daze. It’s like letting out a deep breath you didn’t even know you were holding.

Then it was the realisation. 

That it had been there all along and I had just needed to choose to see it. That no matter what else a situation may hold, remarkable things will always exist alongside them. I just needed to choose to find them. Or rather, I needed to choose what all I could find remarkability in. 

Pursue sunsets, and they will always welcome you with open arms. 

Five years ago, the thought of being where I am today would have been far outside the realms of mere imagination, an idea too fanciful to exist in the reality I knew. And yet, against all odds, I am here, far away from five years ago but no closer to knowing what lies five years from now. It is easy to get so wrapped up in current happenings that you lose sight of the bigger picture, the picture which encapsulates long before five years ago and long after. You forget what was once and what is now; everything you do have, which you didn’t always and may not always have. You forget the transience of life.

 Choosing to recognise things to be grateful for seemed to lessen the ache I’d been carrying around for months. 

So maybe my seventeenth year of existence will be worlds away from my expectations and hopes of it. And I guess that’s life. A very unprecedented (oh, how I’ve come to despise that word) move on life’s part, but life nevertheless.

Honestly, to have lived for 17 whole years, experiencing every thrilling and not-so-thrilling moment of this messy and complex journey, feels remarkable in itself.

And I’m grateful to be experiencing it quarantined on this beautiful island I now call home; safe, healthy, and surrounded by the people that matter most to me in this world.