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| Sunrise Or Sunset? Credit Anthony Ayiomamitis |
We are all aware to varying degrees that culture infiltrates
and informs just about everything that we do on a daily basis. In the nature versus
nurture argument culture plays a pivotal part on the side of nurture, but when
does our culture actually color how we feel about nature and the things we see
everyday? For a brief thought experiment let’s consider sunrises and sunsets.
Picture a sunset. Where are you? Ideally what would you be
doing? If asked to give some word associations you might choose the colors red,
orange, and purple, or perhaps romance, happy hour, vacation, and relaxation.
Sunsets are a great way to close the day.
Now a sunrise. You’re probably a little tired, on your way to work, or at the very least getting ready to go to school or catch an early
flight at the airport. We often pass entire sunrises asleep or participating in
the daily shower-dress-eat ritual that begins our day. Even if we are awake and
in a position to enjoy a sunrise it would be a rare case for us to stop and
actually admire it in a way we would a sunset. Not to say we dislike sunrises,
but save for the retirees in
Symbols abound for birth, death, rising, and falling, but are
there really distinct objective differences between the sun’s rise and set?
Turns out that we would have a nearly impossible time looking at a photograph,
or these days a highly filtered picture from Instagram, and discerning whether
the sun is on its way up or down. Nighttime tends to clear away smog and there
are more contrails from planes toward the end of the day, but these play a
small role in large cities and have no bearing on the pina colada and fish taco
framed indulgences experienced in paradises around the world. The way the
colors beam across the sky through holes blasted in clouds is just as likely to
happen in the morning as in the evening.
The real reasons we have such diverse feelings towards
sunrise and sunset comes from culture and context. Sunsets and sunrises take
place everyday, and though atmospheric conditions play hugely into our
perceptions of their grandeur, largely the way we feel about them is an
essential product of what we are doing when they happen. I remember when the
time changed in October my Facebook feed was full of people on their way home
from work who, upon seeing the majestic sunset gifted to them, could not resist
showing friends of theirs whom I can only presume they believed to have fallen
into a dark cave and were incapable themselves of gazing up at the sky. The
point is that the sunset was there all along, only the context by which we saw
it had shifted with the time change.
Stemming from the accessibility of the sunset over the sunrise,
our culture has romanticized one over the other. Advertisements fill the pages
of travel magazines showing the immaculate couple striding the white sand beach
at sunset, and bars fight over who has the best views of the sunset. When
someone sells you on a sunrise trip the experience is predicated on either the
symbolic view that emerges or the necessity of light for the next part of the
experience. Examples of this might be the power and awe of a sunrise on Mount Ararat , or the dependence on light while you ride
your bike down a Hawaiian volcano after taking in the sunrise across the
island.
My point is simple and profound. I understand why we see
sunsets more often than sunrises, but in the glorification of one we
marginalize the exact same thing as somewhat inferior. Sunrises and sunsets are
the same thing; the only thing that changes is us. What else is there in our
lives that we simply miss out on because we never stop to examine the casualties
of the way we live our lives? To help illustrate the point, every picture or link has been a sunrise!
