Hurricanes are a bitch. Always on the horizon during hurricane season when you live in the Southwest, mostly false alarms, they are disruptive to the spirit and schedule, but when they hit like Ian did they are a catastrophic nightmare, rending untold loss.
The strange part is…before and after the bright sun and clear blue sky are mocking, Mother Nature meanly strutting her stuff.
The other craziness is how disparate the effects are, discriminating for no apparent reason between one community and another, wrecking complete destruction through water or wind on another and leaving another wholly untouched.
The complete unpredictability from one hurricane to the next is also astounding. Your house is safe. You believe you can weather another storm there and boom your property is wiped out and you nearly die or maybe do.
The lessons of hurricanes are threefold in my observation.
They are a reminder of the vast power of nature, unharnessable and uncontrollable even in our modern age of technology.
They are a gift, centering you, bringing everything to a halt and helping you focus on priorities, including detox from modern amenities and connectivity, taking us back to a former savage, rustic era when it was not so easy to be mobile in the physical of remote sense, when families engaged in reading, Board game night and bedtime at sunset, conserving energy during the hottest daylight hours, food and physical provision a central concern of daily life.
And they are a harbinger, blowing away the veil that thinly covers things that really don’t matter so much in life or relationships that have gone cockeyed through the busyness of the rat race.
Notes From Real Life 