Swimming, boating, golf, camping — many people will get more sun over the Memorial Day weekend than they have for many months. That can be both good and bad.
Bad if you catch too many rays, we’ve all had that experience.
But good in many, many ways. Sunlight is one of the best medications for depression, your skin creates additional vitamin D when exposed to sunshine which is believed to help the immune system, and as for me …
… it helps me live in the moment.
I recently wrote about sitting on the hardwood floors of my childhood home and watching the sun rays expose the tiny little objects floating around in the air. Forty years later I still feel good when I think about that moment in which time seemed to slow down, everything else faded away, and I was completely 100% alive in the minute details of the event. Sunlight.
I have many memories that seem to have been somehow focused and made special by the rays of the sun; laying in a rubber raft feeling the rays penetrate my body while floating down Spring River, seeing the rays of the sun slip through the cracks in the roof of our hen-house, the anticipation building as the sun comes up on the morning of Miami, Oklahoma’s annual Sidewalk Sale….
The very first memory I have of life involves sunlight. Our dairy cow was as much pet as she was product. In fact, even her name was “Pet.” My first, and one of my best, memories in life is of her sunbathing in the pasture, me crawling up lying down on her, feeling her sides rise and fall as she breathed in and out, feeling the radiant heat absorbed by her coarse red hair from the suns rays.
Yes, the sun has a way of helping one be completely 100% alive in the minute details of events. Enjoy your Memorial Day. May it be bright and sunny.
