Cool, rainy weather has returned to the Pacific Northwest and with it comes fog. I love walking in the fog. I love how sound gets distorted and how the air makes your skin glisten (and, if you’re me, makes your hair curl).
The world gets smaller and more mysterious. Familiar shapes and scenes seem larger and darker, coming into view suddenly and receding just as fast.
Walking on a foggy path, you are much more aware of the world, even if the details are muted.
How different it is when the fog is in our brains or our hearts. In those cases, the details are overwhelming, keeping us from seeing our way forward, preventing us from making a choice.
Maybe, like in most things, it’s all about the meaning we ascribe to it. What if we took a foggy brain to be a sign to slow down and pay closer attention? What if a clouded, indecisive heart encouraged us to sit quietly and simply notice our internal atmosphere for a while?
When we’re always racing around, be it in our cars or our heads, fog is dangerous. But if you can take it slowly, with your senses wide open, moving through the earthbound clouds can help you see things, and feel things, in a whole new way.
What a relevant analogy for so much of what is happening today! A few of my friends and I were talking recently about feeling like we are in a fog and can’t see through it, that the world seems chaotic and upended in many ways that our footing seems less sure. It has, as you have suggested, forced us to be more aware and to find new ways to see and discover what’s around us.
Thanks Diane! We need the foggy days to appreciate the sunshine, don’t we?