Blinded by the light

 It is a spectacularly glorious sunny day here in the Northeast.

The sun is shining and the temperature is unseasonably warm.

There is a gentle breeze blowing causing the brilliantly colored leaves to dance on the trees before pirouetting down to the ground.

Given that we are well into November, this is a rare and unique gift to many.

Not so much for me however.

I've shared this with you before.

I am not a huge fan of sunny days.

As we move deeper and deeper into autumn, the sun appears lower and lower in the sky making glare a really significant issue for me. I spend 5 hours each morning sitting behind a glass wall navigating the roads of Bergen County.

On sunny days, heading east means battling the sun directly.When I turn to the west ,the issue becomes reflected glare.

In any direction, the end result is a lot of squinting.

The autumnal equinox brings a different sun problem than the rest of the year when the sun might be higher in the sky, beating down on me and overheating my rolling hot box.

It's still a huge annoyance and inconvenience.

Now I know what you are thinking.

Why don't you just go buy some sunglasses?

Well, for one thing,I don't like wearing them.

For many, going through life wearing rose colored or any other tinted glasses makes sense.

Not so much for me.

I find it unsettlingly unnatural and uncomfortable.

I know others feel differently than I do about sunny days.

Many people love them. Good for them. The problem becomes when people try to tell me that my reality and experience around sunny days is wrong or somehow perverse.

They insist that I should be enjoying sunny days and that somehow I am weird and incorrect in my aversion towards them.

It's quite a conundrum.

There is a beauty to sunny days and many feel that this is the way we should all live, bathed in sunshine 365 days a year.

That may be their reality.

It's not mine.

I for one love a cloudy day.

I appreciate a rainy day.

I have even become accustomed to the occasional blizzard and hurricane.

These are all part of my reality.

The sunshine is nice, as long as I can find my patch of shade to live in and get to enjoy it without someone forcing me into that harsh sunlight.

I really dislike being blinded by that light.