My element is Earth. But I am the Wind.
I noticed something today that should have been painfully obvious through the many years of my life. The highs and the lows, the hope and the despair, they change not with my circumstances...but with the wind. Today the wind began to really blow for the first time in a long while, beginning late at night during a thunderstorm, then carrying on through the damp, spring-like morning. It was summertime through the mid-day, and autumn now in the evening. Rich and free, blowing all the stale air away out of my room, and filling me like the sails of a ship at sea.
I feel my best when the wind is blowing, free and clear, without the nasty sting of ice or the smothering fog of hot humidity. And in weather like this, I wonder if perhaps this life is not both heaven and hell; Hell when the air is still and the temperature wrong, and heaven when I can feel a perfect breeze rushing past my soul. The sound of tree leaves, even brittle as they are now, must be like the sound of running water to a Fremen. I could lay in the grass, on a verdant hill or under a giant tree, and just fade away, wanting for nothing.
I wish I could stay--I know these winds well. But I cannot. The happy life is one of excellence and does not consist in amusement. And it is indeed eudiamonia that I seek.
People give up on life too easily. They find their dreams shattered and their childhood beliefs wrong and just leave them washed up upon the shore, the wasted fragments of a silly ideal. But feeling the wind now--knowing that a moment like this could exist--I begin to hope again. It is a poor replacement for the light of her love, but even the brightest of beacons comes up short when compared to the sun. So how can I fault this solace for being less than ideal? It gives me the strength to hold on for at least one more day. It lets me believe for one more moment in the promise of a better tomorrow...a tomorrow not filled with darkness, sadness, sorrow, and doubt.
I wish I had wings. I wouldn't even need to fly with them. It would be enough to just hold them out high, close my eyes, and feel the wind running over them. It would be enough to just imagine.
I feel my best when the wind is blowing, free and clear, without the nasty sting of ice or the smothering fog of hot humidity. And in weather like this, I wonder if perhaps this life is not both heaven and hell; Hell when the air is still and the temperature wrong, and heaven when I can feel a perfect breeze rushing past my soul. The sound of tree leaves, even brittle as they are now, must be like the sound of running water to a Fremen. I could lay in the grass, on a verdant hill or under a giant tree, and just fade away, wanting for nothing.
I wish I could stay--I know these winds well. But I cannot. The happy life is one of excellence and does not consist in amusement. And it is indeed eudiamonia that I seek.
People give up on life too easily. They find their dreams shattered and their childhood beliefs wrong and just leave them washed up upon the shore, the wasted fragments of a silly ideal. But feeling the wind now--knowing that a moment like this could exist--I begin to hope again. It is a poor replacement for the light of her love, but even the brightest of beacons comes up short when compared to the sun. So how can I fault this solace for being less than ideal? It gives me the strength to hold on for at least one more day. It lets me believe for one more moment in the promise of a better tomorrow...a tomorrow not filled with darkness, sadness, sorrow, and doubt.
I wish I had wings. I wouldn't even need to fly with them. It would be enough to just hold them out high, close my eyes, and feel the wind running over them. It would be enough to just imagine.