Mornings

By Atty. Eduardo T. Reyes III

There is something mystical about mornings.

Depending on the time when one awakes, a mystery that awaits unfolding is hidden in plain sight.

I am lucky to wake up every morning to the greeting of a smiling sun rising from somewhere behind the rolling hills of Guimaras. The Kanlaon volcano in Negros looms further behind and above. It rises above the clouds.

The clear blue skies are mirrored by the blue green sea that engulfs Iloilo City like a protractor that is used in high school to measure degrees and angles in a pie chart. Indeed, life has many degrees and angles that we cannot easily measure. We may need our moral protractor to approximate what to do and where to go, next.

Below, at the intersection of Taft North Avenue in Mandurriao district, traffic is building up. I choose to see people inside their cars instead of mere automobiles. These people are heading out mostly for work. Those with families they left at home may have wished they stayed longer to complete the breakfast table but work or business beckons.

To my right is the Guimaras strait that leads to the open seas. Further up ahead is the horizon. From my standpoint, this is also where the sun sets.

Yet mornings are not always beginnings. People say “the morning after.”  It means that there was a “night before.” What happens in the not so dead of the night affects what our mornings after will be. One may have spent the night drinking and so their morning after would be a case of hangover. But there are things much worse than a mere hangover. Some unscrupulous people would commit crimes at night. And the Revised Penal Code would treat this as an aggravating circumstance when the crime was committed using the darkness of the night as cover to ensure its commission.

Mornings in June are particularly enchanting. There is tell-tale sign of rain that sprinkled early and they seem unnoticeably fused with the morning dew. The smell of freshness pervades.

Life is here and now. It is today. This morning.

We may look forward to a romantic sunset. Our eyes may dart to the distant horizon. These are promises that we may look forward to.

But how we spent the night and embrace the morning we wake up to, can spell the difference in the life we will live today.

May we discover what life has in store through the surprise that’s wrapped in what is called “mornings.”

Let us remember that according to Louis Pasteur, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

 (The author is the senior partner of ET Reyes III & Associates (ETRIIILaw)– a law firm based in Iloilo City. He is a litigation attorney, a law professor, MCLE lecturer, bar reviewer and a book author. Among the books he authored is Law on Property and Essentials of Land Registration [2024 Edition] which was on the bestseller’s list in online shops for several months. His website is etriiilaw.com).