Sunset Therapy

There is a picture on my desk of a sunset over a river flowing at the edge of some woods.

And I look at it when I am upset or sad.

I love sunsets... the day melting in so many colors and the sky stained by the fiery sun in hues I have not seen outside nature and in contrasts I thought wouldn't look good together but suddenly I discover they do. And then the day dies... slowly, calmly, inevitably... it calms me down too. I let myself go... let my anger and frustration dissolve with the sun. It is a slow process but very cathartic and therapeutic.

Sunsets are glorious things... like a long letter from home. They fill me with happiness and hope. The streaks of color slowly fading into the night... I could melt into their liquid iridescence. Many an evening have I spent watching the sun slip into the sea and it has never failed to touch me. I love the calm feeling of an endless sea, an endless beach and endless sky... dwarfing my worries. The salty wind and cool sand, the returning birds and the insistent, gentle waves, the red sun drowning itself into the infinite sea and the huge castles of the nimbus clouds towering in the sky. I emerge from it lighter and smiling with a secret that I hold in my heart. I feel peacefully drowsy and unburdened. But I have confided in no one. Somewhere my soul has communed with the spirits of beauty and wisdom and has drawn from them the strength to let go. There had been a fist in my heart squeezing the happiness out of it and now that hand has loosened its grip. It is a caress now, that lulls me to smile and sigh. And somewhere my soul has found peace.