storm clouds and moving on

Dark clouds surround this little city, taunting us with a storm. As I was driving in this morning, I was staring at them at a stop light. They were moving so fast—faster than I’d ever seen clouds move before. And as I was sitting there, staring into the clouds, I was thinking, LIFE is moving faster than I’d ever realized before. It is already April of 2013! It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that I was celebrating the New Year with my beloved. And then I got to thinking, why can’t we move on just as quickly as these clouds, or just as quickly as life? Why do you get stuck in a rut and let our emotions rule us, our feelings take over, and not simply acknowledge it and then let it move on? Most of the time, we want things to move quickly; hurt feelings, anger, irritation, and the like, because they are the most unpleasant feelings. But, for some reason, we always choose to hold on to something.

I am sitting here writing, and my ear is ringing extremely loud—hopefully whoever it is talking about me are saying only positive things.

I have been extremely irritable lately. I don’t know if it is because of Mercury Retrograde, or perhaps this extremely powerful New Moon coming up Wednesday morning… but it’s been so unlike me. I have been getting so irritated about the smallest things, things I would usually just brush aside and not let get to me. But for the past week or so, I am just plain old irritated. Maybe it’s because people don’t listen. There is always a distraction happening, that when you start talking, sure the other persons realizes this, but when they ask you something that you’d already described, you know they weren’t truly listen.  I think that’s one of the biggest annoyances I have, and it makes me highly irritated. And unfortunately, this irritation hasn’t been moving on as quickly as I would like it to. It just lingers, and then more irritation occurs, and then I am just this giant ball of energetic irritation! It’s awful!

So as I am staring into the clouds, and am in awe of them moving so fast, I try to release the irritation. I try and release the anger and hurt I feel. I try and just move quickly through all the negative feelings so I can get to the positive ones. It helped to pretend I was one of those clouds and just move right on past those feelings. It only took the amount of time for the light to change green on my way to work. Now, if we could just get everyone to do that same thing, the world would be a healthier and happier place.

The hail is coming down quite hard now. It sounds like someone is stomping on the roof, banging on the windows. Flagstaff has such unpredictable weather throughout the entire year. Of course I should have known we would get weather in April, and probably May. It happens every year. But I was so excited to look outside yesterday and realize that the lilac tree has lilacs on it. That there is this beautiful green and purple right outside in our back yard. And my daisies! They are green on the bottom, starting to come back from hiding, and looking forward to warmth and the sun. I don’t take it as a negative thing. I know that they will survive and be fine, that they can survive the harshness of hail and chilling temperatures. I know they will bloom soon and continue to do so throughout the rest of the year. It is amazing that they come back each year, regardless of the torture of winter they’ve been through. If only we were so easily able to come back from the harshness of life. Some of us do, some of take the time to mourn and think about what has happened, and some of us, unfortunately, always get stuck in the rut of harshness.

We always get through the storms, even when it feels like they keep arriving. Things move quickly if you allow yourself to pay attention, acknowledge, and then move on.