Mukashi mukashi (A long long ago), in the early days of the world, the Sun and the Moon shared the sky as close friends, they ruled over the sky together bathing the earth in the golden of daylight and silver of moonlight. There was no conflict between them and the endless cycle of light and dark continued.

As the time passed, the Sun began to notice how the creatures behaved and interacted with them. Whenever the sun shone at its full strength, all animals hid under the tree shade, humans wore wide hats, cussed the Sun, stayed inside houses, shut their window to stop sun rays and nobody looked directly towards the Sun. Which made the sun tear up his eyes.

But when people looked at the Moon, everything changed. They would sit on the grass field, gazing up at her silver face for hours, poets wrote poems and lines about her gentle light, and lovers held hands under her soft glow. The ocean itself danced with excitement, chased the moonlight in attempt to catch it.

This all placed a bitter seed of jealousy in Sun's heart and day by day it grew into a big tree.

"I'm the greatest source of of warmth and light", the Sun grumbled to himself. "I give them warmth, I make their crops grow. Yet they sheild their eyes from me, while they stare at that moon for hours with adoration. It isn't fair"

Consumed by jealousy and anger, the Sun decided that he wouldn't share the sky anymore. He started shining at its full strength, with blazing heat flaring in the whole sky alone, forcing the moon out of the horizon. He vowed to shine forever so that the Earth would forget the Moon entirely.

At first, the Sun felt proud but as time passed, the Earth began to suffer. The ground cracked due to intense heat, animals grew exhausted as they could not sleep without darkness, the plants began to wither, rivers started to dry up. The humans wept, begging for this crisis to end. But the blinding day never ended.

The Sun finally looked down at the Earth expecting praises, but found only sorrow, exhaustion and prayers.

Seeing the whole world in pain and sufferings, the Moon stepped back in horizon during an eclipse. The Moon softly and gently spoke:

"Dear friend, why do you burn with so much anger, the Earth is dying under your wrath"


"They love you more!" the Sun shouted, his flames flickering while hurting himself and whole world. "They look at you with adorations. They praise your beauty. When they see me, they hide!"

The Moon smiled sadly and said "They hide from your strength, not because they do not appreciate it, but it's just so immense. Without your golden light, the crops would never grow, the world would freeze, and there would be no life at all. You give them the energy to live. But they need my gentle silver light to rest, to dream, and to heal from the day's hard work. And the most important part, without you, there would be no me. We are not competitors, we are a balance."

The Sun listened, his flames dimmed as he realised the words. He looked at the withered fields below and realized that by trying to copy the Moon's popularity, he had almost destroyed the world he loved. He had forgotten how beautiful his own purpose was.
Deeply ashamed, the Sun apologized. "I am sorry, Moon. I let my envy blind me and I did something that I wasn't supposed to."

After the long disastrous events, they both settled down. The Sun allowed himself to set in the West, stepping down peacefully to give the Moon her time to rule the night sky. Both began to concentrate on their own gifts they presented on Earth.
The Sun started to perfect his sunrise, painting the morning sky in bright shades of pink, gold, and purple in order to bring hope to a new day. The Moon began to work on her own transitions to learn to change shape to make a beautiful calendar for the travelers of Earth.

Everyone is perfectly fine at his own place. Only when we stop comparing our brightness to someone's else and start to nurture our own light that we begin to grow.

________________________________________________________________________________________________