Sunset on New Year’s Eve

In life, there’s a tendency to always long for something. Many of us can’t decipher what that may be. Sometimes we long for a life free of sadness and despair. Some of us long for wealth through some kind of luck bestowed upon us. There are those of us who long for a love that has never graced our lives, and yet we know such love exist.

In a way, the despair of longing can be romanticized. I’ve seen so many in Asian movies. In fact, the Japanese-Taiwanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro is known for movies that were thematically centered on longing—in particular, love. His movies never had a happy ending, and were always complex in nature.

Well, then, what’s the big so what?

Longing allows us the luxury to escape, but reminds us that we are living this one life with endless chances.

A chance to start something.

A chance to change something.

A chance to shed some fear.

A chance to repeat whatever it may have been that we failed at.

My own longing transcends and goes beyond what I am capable of understanding. I may never get the answers that I seek—but, you know it’s never always about finding these answers—rather who I become when I ask such questions.

When I wrote about the Sunrise on Christmas Eve, I thought it was only fitting that I appreciate the sunset as well. This time to watch the last sunset of 2017. In a matter of minutes the sunset happened early in the evening where it cleansed away all of the day’s and even the year’s events. It had no idea that it was the last night of 2017, and only we knew that it will return the next evening to do it all over again. Similar to the way our longings make their presence known every now and then.

However that such things may be, there’s hope in understanding that what matters most is what we do, and who become between the sunrise and the sunset.

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