By Büsra Özgül
A few weeks ago, I, like many others, witnessed a marvellous sunset. I was astonished by the brightness of the colours, the fast change of all the different shades of orange to yellow and by the fact that it started from one second to the next and ended a few minutes later very abruptly. Being in quarantine, I had nothing else to do, and ran to my garden so that I could take a photo and several videos of the spectacle. Normally, when I capture nature with my phone’s camera, I never have the impression that I could catch even a little bit of its beauty as it is in reality. Normally, it never seems magnificent in the picture on my phone; however, this time the sunset was just so beautiful that it was impossible to not to look at it. I was so proud of my sunset photos that I wanted to add them to my story on Instagram immediately. Having done so, I checked a few other stories of my friends and other followers only to realise that I had by far not been the only one noticing (and capturing) the theatre play of nature. That evening I could count more than ten stories that showed the same content, namely that sunset. It was a charming feeling to realise that so many people can be amazed by such little (or big?) things in life. I was happy to myself and my social environment that we could find joy in something so natural yet magical.
It occurred to me that we have all experienced the same moment, but in different ways. Independently from each other we all had experienced the same moment, at different places. Some might have felt like me, enjoying and admiring nature’s play. Others could have been in a sad, stressed or cheerless position, which they could have forgotten for the few minutes in which the show took place. Others again, could have been in a hurry because they might have had an appointment, a meeting or just some place they had to get to and stopped for a second to watch (and photograph) the sky.
What I am trying to say is that we are all clueless about many people, but still under the same sky. Not only today, not only yesterday but for generations, since the existence of our kind. Many people before our time have looked up to the sky because of joy, because of sorrow, because of hope – some looked up to pray, others looked up to discover. Whatever the reasons have been and still are, the sky connects people. Under the same sky and on the same ground, where people suffered because of wars and hunger, there is now peace and felicitousness. Under the same sky where once families and friends could not meet because of distances, we created reachability. This was not created by inventing planes but among others by inventing social media. By inventing a tool that connects people from all around the world we no longer have to remain so unaware of each others’ experiences and feelings.