The Woman Who Made the Sun Come Up
Once, long ago (or maybe yesterday) there was a hard-working woman who woke up every morning two hours before daylight.
It could be summer or winter, but she never failed to be up at the appointed time. It was a testament to how seriously she took her job, which was to make the sun come up each morning. She thought of herself as the Sun Bringer.
It took her two full hours every morning. And it always worked. Sometimes, when she had a lot on her mind, the job seemed especially wearing, and by the time the sun broke the horizon, she was wringing wet and exhausted.
On top of making the sun come up, this person had a number of other jobs she took equally seriously. Because the job of making the sun come up was the first job of the day, and because it took all of her energy and focus, by the time the sun was visible in the sky, the thought of all the other jobs needing to be done that day seemed overwhelming.
But this woman was a perfectionist who knew how to keep going, and she kept going like this for years.
The weight of the workload finally took its toll, the way it inevitably does, and her health broke down. She was sure that all she needed was to catch up on rest, and that by the next day, she’d be back to work as usual.
The next morning, when the alarm went off two hours before dawn, the Sun Bringer found she couldn’t get out of bed. Couldn’t even move. Naturally, she panicked. She’d never missed a single day bringing the sun up, and in her panicked state, couldn’t imagine how the sun could possibly rise without her.
As much as she wanted to jump out of bed and get to work making the sun come up, she wasn’t able to. For the next two hours, she worried herself silly at the thought of the looming catastrophe that would take place when the sun failed to rise.
But as she lay in the dark, frozen with worry and dread, it became apparent that something was happening. It was getting lighter. And lighter. This completely confused Sun Bringer, who struggled to find an explanation.
“It’s a habit, that’s what it is. The sun is coming up out of habit. That’s lucky. By tomorrow, I’ll be back on the job, and everything will be safe and OK again.” Thinking she’d dodged a bullet, the Sun Bringer, who by then was completely wrung out, fell back to sleep.
Hours later, when she woke up, she saw it was so late in the day, she’d missed several other of her vital jobs; jobs she knew that only she could do. But somehow, it appeared that all the jobs, her jobs, had gotten done without her.
This confused her even more. All these jobs she’d been responsible for so many years; how were they being done without her working to make them happen? Out on the street, she could hear the traffic moving without her help. How could that be? At the same time, she noticed that her heart was beating without her direction, her lungs were breathing without her assistance, and the world seemed to be going about its business; and all without her help! Relieved, she fell back into a deep sleep.
How deep, you might ask? The Sun Bringer slept so deeply and peacefully, she didn’t wake up until the next morning. She knew it was morning because it was getting light. And without her help! Again! There was clearly something there to understand, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. She could hear traffic starting to get busy, and she noticed her heart and lungs were performing just as well as if she’d been on the job. Except that she hadn’t been.
When this occurred to her, she was more confused than ever, but strangely, this passed almost instantly. In its place was a lovely and quite unfamiliar deep sense of peace.
She noticed how quickly this deep sense of peace seemed to feel normal, and comfortable even.
As is always the case with this sense of peace, there was a beautiful quiet accompanying it. And out of this beautiful silence, a thought presented itself: “Maybe I don’t need to do these jobs.”
At first, she found that thought frightening but didn’t focus on it because something was trying to come through her, something big she knew she had to pay attention to. “Life seems to be doing very well without me. Maybe I don’t have to do all that work anymore.”
At which point it occurred to her that nobody had ever given her all those jobs; she’d just taken them on. She’d been doing all those jobs for so long, she didn’t even remember when she’d started.
The moment she saw that she was doing more work than was necessary, her need to do that work evaporated, and she found that with that one new, fresh thought, she was living the life she’d always dreamed of. And she lived happily ever after.
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