At 6:27 and there’s always 20 or so people walking and running at Highland Road Park, the only hilly area for XC in our city. Lots of dog walking and the occasional dude doing pull ups. Some days when schedules align, I’ll run with them but on other days I’ll just sit in the quiet and watch the sun come up. Today was one of those days.

One of the unspoken benefits of early morning exercise is watching the sun come up. Sometimes calm and quiet, other times it’s a sideshow to the pain of a hard effort and sometimes you turn around and you missed it, it’s already up.

I’m not going to jump on a cliche bandwagon and tell you you only have each day to live to its fullest and blah blah blah, because that’s tired and said so often that it’s lost it’s punch. I will say you should try and catch a sunrise soon.

Regardless of how the rest of the day turns out, most times a sunrise, if taken in slowly, will remind you of something bigger. That the problems and stress of the world are both just a part of it as well as often times self imposed.

It’ll be 9 before you know it, and the shit may hit the fan. Sunrise may be your last quiet before Ted from accounting gets you good. Maybe, if you try really hard you’ll be able to “serenity now” yourself with that 6:27 memory of the sun, and be able to block out Ted’s idiocy.

But to do that. You have to have a memory of the sun. So it’s now 7:03, you may be at work or driving. Give the sun a glance. Take a moment to pause.

#hugsandhi5s