The Wind, the Future

The wind has been galloping across the plains for the last week, coming down out of the mountains in the west and the north. Trampling my physical body and stealing away with some part of me more subtle, it is cruel and mischievous. Sometimes it comes accompanied by moisture, chilling through layers of wool and down; sometimes it is warmer, sun and blue skies its vessel--poor consolations for the fluids, minerals and sheer life forces with which it is able to abscond. I look for changes when wind blows like this, and there are so many changes to see right now. It is difficult to even assimilate all there is to learn about the civil and political sphere from day to day. Many people I know and listen to on various media outlets say they spend an unfortunate proportion of their time in alternating states of laughter and weeping. Laughing at the sheer absurdity of world events and tears for the lives of the displaced, disrespected and disavowed humans and the exploited planet and her devastatingly drained natural resources. Such mania cannot be healthy. The wind has long been reputed to promote insanity, depression and illness--some say it is the shift in the ratio of positive to negative ions in the air that makes people ill or crazy. It seems like we're in a windy nation right now. The vast differences in pressure in various regions of belief and perspective have caused things to move with great rapidity and little concern for consequence. If these differences are not attended to, we will be leaning into a gale or learning to bend like the tall prairie grasses for a long time. And here is where the future calls to us like the rustling of leaves in a tree a moment before a gust, or the white caps on the windward ocean ripples declaring it is time to adjust the sails. We will only find relief from the dramatic vicissitudes of today if we continually attempt to see, to hear, to understand, to know the other side, the enemy, the neighbor, the one that is different from you--to affect a balance. A breeze is nice for kite flying, but the wind these days has torn through at least three of my kites and two lines and seems to be demanding my sanity as well. I can endure it if I know there is a change coming and calm ahead, and I can mend my kites. I know that calm will come to the prairies eventually. It will take all us of working for it to come to the rest of the world though. The future is telling us to either mend our sails and hold on for an endless romp in a frothing sea or engage in a creative effort to change the very topography and jet streams of our society. This wind metaphor may have gone too far. Forgive me, I've been out in it for days now. It's truly been known to drive people crazy.