The wind is whipping around outside as I sit at my computer. The rattling windows woke me up several times during the night. It’s been like that for two days now and it’s very noticeable here in my home 29 floors above ground level. Gazing out the window, before the morning light began its slow walk into today, I saw nothing but heard the unseen wind and in a distance could hear tumbling activity below: rattling of metal sign posts, traffic whizzing by. All was in darkness. Even when the sun completed its regular vestige arrival into this new day, the wind remained obscured from my vision but all other things once obscured by the darkness could be seen. I know the wind is there and was about to say that I can “hear” it, but that’s not an accurate statement. I hear something, but what is it?
The wild wind that I think I hear is the sound of unseen particles, atoms or something (I am as far from being a scientist as the east is from the west…and beyond). If I really want to dig deep enough and investigate, I think I’d have to start with the word “wind” and what it means today and perhaps trace it back as far into the English or any language available, to see what it was intended to mean, then and now. Today, I suppose the simplest way to define what the word “wind” is intended to mean is that movement of air that one feels on his skin or that result in us seeing some external activity. But does that define “what is wind?” The answer is no, but I won’t go further because as I sat to write this blog, hearing the howling sounds of the wind outside my windows, the resultant flapping of the canvass that covers my garden furniture on the balcony, I think about the phrase, “winds of adversity” which is atypically applied to the human condition.
Again, using nature as a barometer and thinking about nature and how she reacts when the winds of adversity strike her, I see: trees that remain rooted, flowers that flow (or whip) with the breeze, grass that remains where planted. None of them run and hide in a cave until the adversity is removed; until the thing that keeps battering at them in apparent efforts to either disable or utterly destroy them. They remain precisely where planted. Does nature have thoughts? I doubt it (notice I say “doubt it” because for me nothing would surprise me. Before I would have uttered a definite no; no way! But now I question everything that has been handed down by man; no longer live like everything I am told is the be all and end all; the gospel truth).
These are my ramblings on comparison with nature’s physical reaction to the winds of adversity and man’s physical reaction. I can’t divorce man’s mental reaction from his physical reaction, so when I touch upon that, I will assign nature the ability to reason or think. I will start with the mental reaction comparison, first, because no one acts without first thinking.
If nature had thoughts, would they be the, “Oh, oh: here he comes again. Nasty wind is out to get us!” Or would nature smile and continue to smile, knowing from past experiences that “this too will pass,” and continue on doing what she was doing before she got the news that “wind” was on his way to get her? I know, personally, that when I hear “wind” is on its way, I baton down my hatches. My mind “freaks out” and goes off on all these forecasted dooms day things that “might” happen. What I’ve been doing comes to an absolute standstill as my mind goes on a wild rampage trying to figure out what to do; to guess what’s “going to go wrong” so that I can “prepare” for it. More often than not, what I’d “projected” as the likely outcome of wind’s visit upon my life, never comes to fruition and I’ve put my life on hold for absolutely nothing. I’ve stopped living in the moment and the tendency is indeed to live in a future that never happens! This is the damage done by the mind, long before wind ever shows up, if it even shows up.
As for the physical side, well nature flows with the blows and man prepares for the worst; runs and hides; gathers up his “valuable material treasures” and hides them in a safe place so they won’t be destroyed or washed away/removed from him.
With what’s going on with the world economy, felt here in rich old North America, but a common everyday fact of life for many other countries, I look outside and see people cashing in their savings, selling before they take more losses. I see a lot of reaction and not a lot of positive action.
When we get wind of winds of adversity coming down the pipeline, we react, we panic and we do things that, after the wind has passed, quite often we wished we had not done.
How often do I focus and see the good that has come out of this wind of adversity that has just blown through my life? Do I see the new resolve and strength of character that has been forged in the fire and wind of adversity? Do I give myself credit (not in a narcissistic way) for having “stood the winds of adversity” and come out whole and in one piece? I can honestly say that hitherto fore I have not done so. I have only seen my failures and those failures relate to my judgment of self for not having the ability to forecast and remove myself from that wind. I see a need to control everything, even the unseen winds of adversity that approach my doorstep.
Can I, can anyone, control the wind that mother nature lays upon us? No we cannot. Can we control the external winds of adversity, caused by another, that come upon our lives? No we cannot. The only control we have in such situations is the ability to control and determine how we will react and what we, the individual, will do under such circumstances, and then how we will continue living our lives afterwards.
I think that I would be a better person, if after having overcome the winds of adversity in my life, I took the time to dig deep and find the treasured lessons that I learned, and then take them out and use them; for my benefit and that of the rest of the world whose doorsteps I might enter upon.
When all is said and done, the winds of adversity in our lives, just like the winds of Mother Nature, will be gone and they will leave something behind; something that could not be swept away, no matter how strong its gale full force. Find that “thing” that remained steadfast, take it out, embrace and examine it. See what it is, and then get out there with renewed and strengthened determination using that treasured gift that remained behind with you to rise above and conquer all that would keep you down or blow you away”!
Our strength is in the unseen and my strength comes from within….but I need to dig, to go on a treasure hunt to find that which has been lost and buried in the deserts of time, covered by the debris left behind by the winds of adversity. There is a treasure there…just waiting…to be uncovered – it is ME.
