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| Fog, Big Sur, April 2022, Steve Brown |
The weather changes constantly along California 1 north of Morro Bay, so frequently in fact, that it is steady and stable, like the rhythm of a song. Except on very rare occasions, you know that on your journey, you will wind your way through the constant interplay of sunshine and fog that may or may not include brief intense downpours of rain, the clouds rolling in, echoing the rhythm of the sea.
I can never decide what I love more on that drive, a wall of fog or a burst of sunshine, because the glory is not in one or the other but in the landscape constantly changing, as the clouds form, move, and disperse, over and over again.
I cannot help but wonder if our lives are like that, and yet we miss the grand sweeping views of the interplay of gray and light because we only want the sunshine. How many glorious moments of thundering waves and cool, thick whisps of blindingly dense uncertainty do we resent in our own lives because we are addicted to sunshine and seek storm-free lives even though that is an impossibility. What would we feel and learn if we could just sit in that cold gray mist and watch the changing light as a storm moves through our lives and then passes? Sure, there are times to run for cover and pray for sunshine. Instinct is important. There are definitely times we need to seek refuge from the storms. Some things, like the death of a loved one or a marriage that refuses to survive, can feel overwhelming. But most of us never want any level of storms in our lives at any time because we are addicted to sunshine. And because we don't practice sitting in hard moments, when the big ones come, they feel devastating, or worse, we just go numb.
I think there may be a way of actually sitting in the small problems and enjoying them immensely--the simple joy in watching our ego react to the most-recent cloud coming our way--the picnic we learn to absolutely love precisely because we got rain instead of sunshine. I don't know if I can get there. But I think it's possible because I love the loss off sunshine along the California coast even though my skin always yearns for that glorious return of the sun. I love feeling that fog bank move in, at first everything filtered by a sodium light that softens the landscape while still letting in some warm rays, and then watching and feeling how that thin film thickens to clumpy gray while shadows vanish before the diminished light as the clouds crash into the mountainside and spew upward over the ridges. I can sit there and enjoy that cold, brutally moist wind because I have full confidence that if I sit there--sure some cold pelting rain may hit briefly--but a moment of warm golden light is guaranteed to return.
I want to learn to live life like I drive California 1--open to the everchanging reality before me in all its glory, enthralled by the shifting clouds and the play of light and shadow, rather than limiting my moments of joy to the brief bursts of sunshine and feeling dread each time another cloud approaches.
I believe there are a few rare people who have stopped seeking storm-free lives on the cellular level, the only place it really counts, and enjoy the rained-on picnic as much, if not more than the perfect one, who enjoy the flat tire as part of the trip (a chance to get down in the gravel and see the world from something close to a crawling-critter perspective), and I want to learn to become one of them because what good does it do you to desire only sunshine when you live in a landscape where clouds will surely come?
We all live in landscapes where clouds will surely come. Our addiction to sunshine keeps us from enjoying this moment, whatever it be. But I don't think it needs to be that way, and I am determined to find out if there isn't a better way of living--a way where my happiness isn't dependent on the weather being favorable to my plans for the day. I want to discover a way of being where my happiness isn't even necessarily tied to joy. I love a rainy day, but I can't say that a rainy day makes me happy. It makes me depressed, but it's a good depression, a wonderful melancholy that makes you want to read a good book, a depression that I cannot only live with, but one that I can savor, for I can name the source of that feeling--the diminished light--and I have full confidence, based on experience, that the storm will eventually pass, and that the sunlight will return in all its glory. Why do we struggle so to have that same recognition in our broader lives when experience should clearly teach us everything is changing, always? We might as well enjoy all of the ride--not just the most comfortable parts. A life focused on all moments is a life lived fully. A life focused only on sunshine is diminished greatly by denying what life actually is--constant change, change so constant that if one gets into the groove and goes with the beat, one finds one can sway to the music.
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