Sunlight.

As the sunlight draws you back to consciousness, causing you to resurface from the sea of dreams, it streams memories to you.

This bright light illuminates the darkness in you, allowing you to clearly visualize your immediate past in holistic detail.

You look, and you perceive, and you can see, by the beaming light, the faults in you. The faults, like cracks in a mirror, that don't let you see things as they should be, but as they are. Reality is reflected in a form of twisted honesty, and the illusion you perpetuated is exposed for the farce it is.

The sun, ever-present and unchanging, hands down upon the earth the same light. At times, the sun is welcomed as an illuminating and warming agent. At others, it is cursed as a tortuous, unrelenting force.

But it is constant.

Examining one fault closely, man can see what his actions have brought him. He believes he is doing good for himself, but sharply realizes that all he does is only bringing him strife. Yet he persists, thinking he will be rewarded; doing the same thing and expecting different results is, of course, insanity. This revelation is also cast upon him.

This shattered visage also reveals to him that, while he may believe—rightly or not—that he caused himself such agony, he is not to blame.

Perhaps he perceives this glass wrong. Perhaps there is some detail that he has overlooked. But maybe, just maybe, this broken view isn't even helpful to have in front of him. Acting on this, he removes the pane—his pain follows—and gets to see the sun, feel the sun, without the unhelpful barrier that has occluded its gaze.

He refuses to continue in futility, he refuses to pity himself, and he refuses to slow down. He would much rather push forward, even stronger than yesterday, and take everything that actually was meant for him, and not torture himself over what just may not be for him.

And yet, there is that small hope, rooted so gently, which suggests that he not leave behind this damaged view, and suggests the possibility of repairing it.

He does not violently uproot it, however, but he leaves it in the sun. The celestial object will turn its eye upon the plant and either nurture it or destroy it permanently.

He finds solace in the sun, as the solstice has given him his answer.