Why sunset is my favorite therapy

I discovered the wonders of a massage when I was 21. Too young to be tired but I was working a graveyard shift talking to strangers who’d brutalize me with words asking why their phone bills were skyrocketing. Massages were what I looked forward to on weekends, along with the pirated CDs of films featured in the previous week’s homily.

Many of my hobbies require money—books, theater plays, spas, camping trips, coffee crawls, gastronomy. They fuel my brain and my body. They make me cultured and interesting. They help me sound smart and knowledgeable when I talk to people I need to impress.

But the sunset? It never asked me for anything. Yet it gave me everything it has to offer.

I have no idea when I started liking the sunset. Maybe it was when I heard that the Philippines has world class sunsets, that many countries don’t even see the sunset the way we do, that I began to appreciate it more. I chased it. Waited for it in all the afternoons I was outdoors. Took pictures of it. Heck, I even made a poem about it.

Because whenever I watch the sunset, all I could think about is that grand beauty before me. How it slowly turns the sky pink, then orange, sometimes a fiery shade before fading into deep blue. It does not require me to think about what’s next except for the moon. It doesn’t make me feel like I have to understand why it has to hide behind the clouds on days when the heaven looks gray and sad. It doesn’t ask for my money, of how much I was willing to give for its show. And most importantly, it didn’t have to explain itself. It shows its retreat when the sky is clear, or it doesn’t.

Sunsets made me understand so many things. Like how endings can be beautiful too. Sad, but too damn beautiful it could even make you smile. How its final show of grandeur must be done to give way to an undeniably magnificent moonlight. How it misses its opportunity to show off on a cloudy day only to try again the following dusk. And how it has to end the day, and yet it gives hope and assurance that it will show up again the next day.

That’s how precious the sunset is.

So never waste it with someone who’d be gone by sunrise.