There was a moment a few months ago, as I laid out in the grass soaking up the strangely warm November sun, dreading the cold weather bound for Lookout Mountain, when I saw a lizard sitting on a rock. He sat there frozen in the heat. As I watched him, I felt like I was looking into a mirror, you know, the kind of mirror that gives you scales and a tail. There was something about the sun that made Mr. Lizard and I want to stay immobilized in its rays for hours on end.
I know sunlight provides plenty of health benefits for humans, like improving sleep, getting important vitamins, limiting stress and depression, and improving brain function. I also know it wasn’t just the comforting thought of being healthy that drew me in. It felt like I needed the sun before moving on with my day, like I was addicted to a drug that always hits.
Lizards are ectotherms, or cold-blooded, and need warmth from the sun to regulate their body temperature. They need it in order to survive long-term. Some ectotherms burrow or hibernate to escape the cold, while others go through a process called diapause, which slows their bodily functions down to limit the amount of energy it takes to keep them alive.
Mr. Lizard was one of these creatures, and as I watched him perched on that rock, I realized I might be one too. Maybe the reason I felt like I needed to stay there to soak up the sun was because I needed it to give me energy, and without it I would fall into a deep, hibernant coma.
The term “cold-blooded” also refers to the temperament of an emotionless killer and makes me think of monsters like Dracula, Jack the Ripper, or Ted Bundy. Now, the ferociousness of these monsters and that of the ectothermic animals that roam the wild are fairly similar, but when I look at a cute lizard on a rock, it doesn’t seem fair to me to make that comparison through the term “cold-blooded.”After all, there are other cold-blooded animals (like butterflies) that don’t look like prehistoric dinosaurs waiting to chomp us to bits.
The main point, though, is that when I say that I think I am a cold-blooded animal, I don’t want you to think that I am some sort of psychopath, just that I need the sun in my life.
Actually, I think we are all a little bit cold-blooded. We all need warmth and comfort and love, and if we don’t get those things we will die. Even the people who really are “cold-blooded killers” still need those things to survive. In fact, one of the biggest causes for the mental illness that leads to sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies is a lack of warmth and comfort and love in their early childhood development.
In order to give love, we have to receive it. It has to come from outside of us, something constant and never ending, like the sun. If we don’t have access to that external source of love, we enter into a form of diapause and slowly stop loving others in return. It makes sense. If we never leave hibernation, love will eventually run out, and without a source of replenishment it’ll never come back.
So, as I laid there, basking in the glorious sunlight and refusing to go to class, I watched Mr. Lizard appreciating the same beautiful warmth that I was, and found a sense of camaraderie. He understood me. Because beyond its incredible health benefits, sunlight is an opportunity to gather with friends, grow in community, and love one another. And loving others is how we pay it forward for the One who loved us first.