High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘security’

When I was a small child, my parents would sometimes wake me in the black of night when a thunderstorm was moving in across the bay.  “Come watch the storm,” they would say.

They would tuck me snugly between them on the sofa in the enclosed sun porch and we would watch the lightning dance toward us across the churning waves.

They laughed at the deafening thunder, snuggling closer, and exclaimed, “Oh!  Did you see that one?” when a bolt big enough to light the horizon flashed down from the clouds.

After awhile, they would carry me back to bed and tuck me back under my covers.  “Wasn’t that beautiful?” my mother would say, kissing my forehead.

And so I learned to love the power and majesty of storms.  They might be frighteningly loud and startling.  And they sometimes left great damage in their wakes.  But I felt safe, enveloped by a love so large that only my heart could understand it.

Now I am grown, and reading the news I see ferocious clouds building all around us, threatening to unleash a mega-storm upon us all.  I pray for atmospheric change, a lifting of the pressures, an unexpected change in the direction of the prevailing winds.

My mind is tempted to rush into scenarios of unimaginable loss and destruction.  But I will not feed those energies.  I focus on the immediate present, on this moment where I am safe, and warm, and dry and surrounded by music and light.  Now is the only reality.  Everything else is only a fabrication, a creation of thought.  Everything else is beyond my control.

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” counseled Gandhi.  “Fear not,” said another great Teacher.  So I choose to keep my mind quiet that I might touch the infinite peace beneath even the most turbulent outer displays and project only peace into the world.  And I find myself enveloped by a love so large that only my heart can understand.