Storms

Sometimes I look around me, at all the things I see, all the things I know, and I take in account all the things I am not supposed to know, and I wonder,”can the world get any worse?”

Everyone knows that’s the kind of question you should never ask, because 99% of the time, it does get worse; a rain cloud breaks open over your head and drenches you to your bones.

Sometimes I even think “what’s the point of fighting anymore?” But then I realize that if we don’t fight, if we just lay down the and become cattle most people seem to want to be, that this world really is going to go to hell in a basket, and only a few people, who feel they own the air we breath and the water we drink, and the sky above us, will be left to carry our little wicker baskets out to the fire holes and drop us in, one by one.

The problem is, so few fight. So few stand their ground, or even push the front line farther creating beach heads. And the few that do, often are forced to do it alone, and either fall behind enemy lines as the lines come crashing in behind them, or are burned so badly they have a hard time wanting to get up to try again.

So many storms come, and people flock for shelter cursing the cold rains, the floods, the wetness of the trousers they wear that will soon dry, or the papers they could just reprint. So few stop to see the change a storm can bring, the freshness in the air once it’s gone.  And granted, the metaphorical storm here is rarely a storm we would ask to go through, or want to go through, or even fear to go through, there is still something, some small gem to be found in a storm.

Perhaps it’s nothing more than a friends smile, or clutch of their hand when we cry. Perhaps is just the feeling of strength that surges through our souls when we realize we made it through to the other side and have come out stronger than we were before. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that this is one storm we won’t have to go through again.

What ever the rainbow may be that we find on the other side of our storms, the point is even the worst storm in our lives can be somehow be turned around into a well of strength to fight through another day, another week, another year. It gives us the courage to face our enemies, whether in our own mind or on a real front, even if we fear we may lose. We know we can’t give in, to give up is to fail, and to fail is to give evil an overhand.

So what do we do? We learn to dance in the rain.

This is me. I dance in the rain.