The Nature of Clouds...

Blood rushing in my eardrums, sweat pouring down my face, and slightly out of breath, I stood on top of the mountain and took in the view.  Stretching out before me like rumpled blankets, the distant mountains seemed almost fuzzy.  I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that what looked like plush flocking was actually the canopy of innumerable trees.  I knew that if I had been standing next to any one of them, the tree would have been much taller and more imposing than me.  But from here, it was just a small, distant thing.  It was a tiny dot of green amongst a rolling ocean of the color.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Tucked under a stack of books, I found an old journal.  As soon as I picked it up, I knew exactly what it was.  I had spent hours scribbling in it.  The feel of it in my hands was so familiar.  I found one entry where I had pressed the pen so hard into the paper, I was surprised I hadn't punctured the page with my letters.  I ran my fingers over the deep grooves and recalled without having to read what I wrote what troubled me.  At the time, it seemed so monumental.  I remember how angry and sad I was and how it seemed like I would never feel anything but that.  And now... it was just a small, distant thing.  Had I not come across the journal, I doubt I would have even thought of what once made me so intensely overwhelmed.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Whenever I am upset or perplexed with how I am going to handle a situation, I try to remember that slightly lightheaded feeling of standing on top of that mountain.  I try to remember the sky, so vast and seemingly endless, and how it spread out above me and outward.  Light filtered through the fast-moving, masses of fluff.  The clouds arrange themselves in a morphing picture.  One minute I can make out a face in the clouds... the next, an elephant.  Up so high, it's almost as though I can reach out and touch one and run my fingers though it, shaping it and forming it.  I try to imagine my problem as a bug.  It is a bug on a leaf, on a tree, surrounded by other trees, surrounded by more trees, on a mountain, surrounded by other mountains.  The bug is there... to be certain... but it is so small in comparison.  We can spread our arms heavenward, or stare at the mosquito.  I choose to think on the nature of clouds.