Uncatchable Winds: Allowing Thoughts to Drift Like Clouds
A Year of Noticing - Day 73
The winds today were wild and fierce, and I found myself wishing I could bottle up some of the experience this morning to share. It’s interesting isn’t it, we can share pictures and the things we see, and while we all might notice different things in the photo, it is an experience that we can share in many different ways!
Many years ago, one of my favourite daytime television hosts was Rachel Ray. Part of it was that I sort of always had a dream of hosting a cooking/baking show, and I also loved how simple she made cooking and she wasn’t fond of measuring when she was cooking which is something the recovery perfectionist in me aspired to cook more in that way! She also often talked about how she wished she could share the delicious smells of food with viewers, “smell-o-vision” was what she called it.
And yet, through all the advances in technology there isn’t yet a way (at least that I’m aware of), for us to share smells or the touch sensation, like that of the wind. Fascinating isn’t it? The best way I can describe the winds today, is to show a picture of how is was blowing snow on the river into drifts, revealing some of the frozen river below.
I’ve written about the feeling of wind a few times already this year…
Day 7 - Kindness is a Survival Skill; Day 13 - Embracing the Changing of the Season; Day 33 - Embracing "What is" and the power of love over force; Day 38 - Migration Reflections; Day 48 - Unexpected beauty of the colour brown; Day 51 - Harnessing the Wind’s Message
This makes me notice that I notice the winds often, probably because I am sensitive to touch and so I notice when the winds are stronger and it impacts my day! The wind always reminds of the element of air (earth, wind/air, fire, water), and personally I connect the wind to my thinking thoughts.
It’s interesting to me that wind is something we can’t catch or hold onto or capture, it just is.
Our thoughts are similar - we can’t catch our thoughts, or hold onto them… and one way that we often try to hold onto thoughts is repeating them over and over. When they are positive, this can be helpful and supportive. However, many times we can get stuck into unhelpful thought patterns, repeating them over and over because if we stop thinking them they are gone.
Today I noticed this connection to the wind/air and my thoughts more than I ever have before. Many people have often offered the idea to imagine your thoughts floating by like clouds, without getting attached to them or adding stories or hooks, but just experiencing them as is… and then allow them to keep on floating by.
And so, today, I noticed the sky and the clouds, and by early afternoon… all the clouds had cleared and the sky was clear… interestingly my thinking was also clear and focused, and all the clouds had floated on by.
Here’s some images of the clouds that I noticed as the winds blew, and as my thoughts flowed through and onward today…
