Last night I streamed an episode of a Star Trek spin-off series. The episode opened with a holographic character watching the sunrise. He says (through narration) that he's watched tens of thousands of these in the course of his life, and nothing about it is new to him anymore. He keeps watching, though, because soon everyone else will wake up, and for them, the sunrise will mean everything it always means to people who are tired and hoping - a chance, a reset, a reason to believe today might be different than yesterday. He doesn't feel that anymore, himself (Yes, it's a weird contradiction where sometimes holograms can feel and other times they can't). Yet he watches it anyway, knowing it means something to the others.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about that. The same ten minutes of light crossing the same ten miles of ground, and it lands as nothing for him and as everything for them. Same time. Same event. Two completely different experiences.

I think most of us know both sides of that sunrise, sometimes in the same week. Some mornings we wake up and the day feels wide open and full of things that could still happen, could still change, could still surprise us. Other mornings the day feels like something we've already lived a thousand times. Same commute. Same worries. Same slow ache we're getting used to carrying. Time doesn't move any differently on those mornings. We do.

What gets me about the hologram, though, is that he's not bitter about it. He doesn't stop watching just because it's stopped being new to him. He shows up for a sunrise he can't feel anymore, because he knows someone else is about to feel it fully. That might be one of the more sacred things a person can do, keep faith with a hope you're too tired to feel yourself, on behalf of someone who still can.

I think that's most of what showing up looks like, most weeks, for most of us. Somebody has to make the coffee and turn on the lights even on mornings they don't feel like being kind. Somebody has to sit with the grieving friend even when their own grief has gone numb and quiet. Somebody has to keep singing the hymn when it stops meaning what it used to mean, because the meaning might come back for the person next to us and our singing makes room for that.

Time is strange that way. The same stretch of it holds the whole distance between exhaustion and wonder, and somehow it's asking both of those things of us at once. It's endless in what it keeps demanding, and also small enough to fit into one more sunrise, one more morning, one more chance to show up for someone else's hope even on the days we can't quite find our own.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that you get a sunrise that still feels new. And if you don't get one, keep watching for the sake of others about to wake up. Some moments are gifts for us, and some we hold for others. That's the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa