In Flight

I’m on a flight up the eastern seaboard over the remnants of a ferocious hurricane, the kind we’re seeing more of these days. Just as so many have been promising, the planet is changing in real time. Our time. Fortunately for me I’ve been afforded a window seat and I’m glued to the view. The pearl gray carpet of clouds beneath us is thick, angry with tiny knots and swirls, like soiled shorn, sheep’s wool. They’re like no others I’ve seen from these heights.

On the distant horizon monster shaped dragon clouds back lit by an electric orange sunset, lurch out of the gray blanket as if in final gasps before they sink back into their own hell.

I sit effortlessly traveling to my desired destination in dry, protected comfort. Yet there are fellow earthlings for all intents and purposes occupying the same space, suffering real trauma. Trauma from which I am spared. 30,000 feet directly below there are flooded towns, people in immediate need of rescue standing on their roofs, folks rowing away from their homes and all that’s in them scared, exhausted and facing an uncertain future.

As we bumpety bump along, life metaphors abound.

Would that in the midst of challenging times I would remember this. Elevate thought, seek the heavens, find the zen part that is traveling forward rather than stay stuck in the storm of life. Stay in but not of. Breathe. Keep my eye on the destination. Reset my compass as needed to stay on course.

Looking to the horizon and its dragons I know that monsters, monstrous thoughts, all that seems fearful in my past and future will sink into its native nothingness if I just keep to the journey. I need not go down with them. The sunset is a deeper orange now. Time moves quickly. There is not a moment of the now to waste.

Blue Pearl