Archive for the ‘sky’ tag
People of a divided sky
Once upon a time, on a world not very different from this one, there lived a race of people with very short memory spans. They remembered nothing of yesterday, and only very little of what had happened a few hours ago. Their view of the world therefore, was mostly limited to what was happening now.
One popular debate that raged among the people was about the existence of the sun and the stars. During the day, one group sang praises of the sun and laughed at those who spoke of the night sky and the stars. They said that all that needs to be seen can be seen quite clearly in the light of the sun. Anyone who, in spite of the sun’s very real presence, insisted on believing in fairy tales about a so-called star-studded night sky, was clearly delusional.
After sunset, the other group praised the stars while singing and dancing under the beautiful night sky. They ridiculed the sun people and asked them where their sun was, now that the glorious stars had appeared to prove them wrong. Revelling under the starry sky, they denied the importance, and even the existence, of the sun. They declared that the stars were all anyone should ever need and that no sun could ever stand against the sheer awesomeness of the night sky.
There was a third group on this world, a relatively small minority of people. This was composed of those who knew of dawns and twilights. They knew that while it was true that the sun lit everything up when it was out, it also blinded people to the beauty of the stars. They also knew that even though the night sky was beautiful to behold and brought them much joy, it wasn’t really much of a light source, especially when compared to the sun.
They did their best to point this out to the day people and the night people, but nobody much listened to them. And thus, the quarrels went on as surely and as frequently as the sun rose and set.
