Sometimes some things are simply so stunning you have to stare at them. I couldn’t help but get lost in the sky each morning as the clouds ruffle over the warm pinks and blazing oranges of the fall morning. No computer program or paintbrush could ever recreate the majesty of the sunrise, the promise of the new day waiting just beyond the horizon.

The light of the sun filtered through the background and streamed through the holes in the cloud, it seemed as if God had beams coming from the heavens and are hitting the earth. The sky should be sold in an art gallery for a billion dollars, yet it's here for all of us, a universal masterpiece. For a moment, I lose myself, lose the stress of my day full of tests and quizzes. My mind drifted to summer mornings spent up north, sitting on the porch sipping my coffee and watching the sun being pulled across the sky.

A sudden bleep shakes me from my trance with the sky and I realize that I have drifted left of the center line, close to colliding with an oncoming car in the opposite lane. After correcting my mistake, I wished so badly that I wasn’t on my way to school so I could just pull over and watch the sunrise, yet a test was waiting for me in the first period.

Every day as I drive to school the impossibility of the perfection of the sky is like a drug, all I want is more of it and all other factors melt away. It makes me wonder how humans deserve the way the universe functions, working in a symphony of atoms and molecules and light and energy, that all ends in life, the impossibility of it all can never be fully understood. The morning sky is like yin and yang, the dark clouds trying to cover the earth as the light pushes them across the sky, away from the earth. As I stare slack-jawed up at the sky, a sad thought crosses my mind.

When my kids drive to school on the brisk fall mornings, they may not get to see the cotton candy skies, may not get to watch the giant star that gives us life spatter the sky with the warm color palette of the morning, greeting them and telling them, “have a great day!” I realize the hypocrisy of my actions, driving myself to school, alone, in my giant gas guzzling suburban when I could easily ride the bus or carpool. I may admire the beauty of the sky every morning but if I truly want to enjoy this for my whole life and let the next generation have the same opportunity to have a such a trance that I have, then I need to start acting on my wonder and love for the beauty of the earth.