The true magic of life is called perspective. And most blessings when they present themselves to us, they come covered in several layers and heavy disguises. Like storms.
A few years ago I went to visit my good friend Albert. Albert lives on a farm on the outskirts of the city. It had just happened. The earthquake, I mean. The city was in ruins and the small villages around it were even worse.
Chunks of what once were living rooms and kitchens laid scattered on the pavement. Bricks and dust and more bricks and more dust. I remember walking through the mess and finding a baby shoe under a piece of wood that looked like in another lifetime it used to be a door. I couldn’t help but shudder trying to picture the owner of that shoe. Maybe he still had the other pair on.
We were on Albert’s farm because it was on our route to the farthest village on the mountain. We carried provisions and blankets to donate to the most damaged. When he saw us coming with the van filled with provisions he grinned and said that if that farmhouse had survived the last five hundred years nothing was bringing her down, ever.
I looked at the magnificent building, at five hundred years of history. There were a few cracks and some cupolas broken but other than that the building seemed intact. I was in awe.
I turned and asked if it was scary to experience and earthquake in such an isolation, knowing that if help were needed it wouldn’t come that fast or easily.
He laughed at me kindly. Looked at me with eyes of tenderness like I was a child that didn’t understand life.
“Honey, earthquakes are only a tragedy in the human world. Because they threaten their concrete-built ecosystem. Their perfectly orquestrated architectural jungles. Earthquakes in nature, are simply… natural.” his voice trailed off as his stare gazed towards the corn fields “Like any other ‘natural disasters’” he continued making air quotes “You see, they are just the beautiful Earth showing off. She moves, she shakes, she explodes in magnificent displays of beauty and power.”
I stared.
“Tsunami waves are just catastrophic because they destroy entire cities and drown the humans in them. But in nature, a tsunami must be the most magnificent thing to watch from a distance. As well as a hurricane.” He continued. “Our Mother showing just how strong her lungs can get. Or a volcano is just the culmination of how hot she’s feeling.”
“Our problem is that we believe She belongs to us. We believe that anything that happens within the Earth’s cycles happen to us. While we are simply her guests.”
“As for the earthquake? I can tell you that very few things equal in beauty as the way the crops dance from side to side and up and down to the rhythm of the Earth’s pulsing. It’s a spectacular piece of theater. Only the luckiest ones get to appreciate the show.”
That day was a blessing and that conversation with Albert a present. I arrived with provisions and left with a lesson and a wrapped piece of warm cornbread that left the van smelling of heaven.
That’s when I got it.
A storm is just a storm to whoever is on the shore.
When we are vulnerable, like a boat cast at sea, we might see the storm as definitive, as permanent. Everything feels permanent when it is happening to us. It isn’t. And remembering that might just be the most valuable piece of information we need to get through life.
We tend to wonder why things happen to us. As if we were the protagonists of any of the Earth’s stories.
Storms might feel scary, dangerous, violent… unnecessary. But sometimes storms just have to happen and we just happen to be in them.
There is no purest blessing than crossing the storm and coming out on the other side. Cleaner. Clearer. Calmer. Healed.
The storm comes, the consequences feel absolute… all the broken pieces, all the irreparable damages. But the storm came to tear apart what needed to be teared apart. A cleanse. A shaking of foundations, so things could be rebuilt on stronger ground.
Storms can be scary, we might resist the change they have come to bring. But storms are a blessing in heavy disguise. They come and they go. And they leave us to build ourselves after. To pick up the pieces, figure out top from bottom, head from feet, and regroup life back together.
Whatever your storm, your loss, your suffering, take confort in knowing that it came for a reason. You needed to lose that job, you needed to lose that love. You are not the victim of the loss but the privileged that gets to learn the lesson. To experience the darkness of loss so that lighter shades can shine through you.
A storm is just a storm if you are standing on the shore.
Let go and submit your control to nature. Trust that the less you resist the better it’ll get.
Walk out of the storm.
Let the wind blow your fears.
Let the rain wash your doubts.
Let the thunder light the path.
