Life at the end of the rainbow

London is probably the worst weathered city of the world. Its sunny skies can turn to traitorous rain in minutes, its clouds can sit and loom all day or the sun can deliver unbearable temperatures. A city of mixed fortunes. It’s true, that when the British have nothing to talk about they automatically talk about the weather. It’s the conversation starter that can build friendships, and even successful marriages. The strange thing is that we talk about it like it’s a surprise, as if we had no way of possibly knowing the weather, when in fact, we can find out next weeks forecast almost immediately. However, how believable is it? And in life can we expect the same? If we could have a snapshot of our future, how reliable would it be? We have to wonder, can we rely on the weatherman, or is he our fair weather friend?

The clouds can be a good indicator of how we feel, the weather can directly affect our mood, and according to the star signs the moon and the sun can be great indicators of our future. So why then, is it that many reject this important method of prediction for our lives? The sky, the weather, everything we don’t seem to understand fully makes up the path of our life. Should that be a question or a statement? You see it’s easy to make the questions, but are these the things can really deliver the answers?

When the sky rains on your parade, the weather changes your plans and often slows you down; who is to blame? Walk along Oxford Street on a wet day and you will see the umbrellas out in full force. But, in life, do we have umbrellas when things go bad? What are our safety nets? How do we protect ourselves from the bad and make it safely to dry land? There are people in our lives who try to bare the brunt of the weather for us, protect us, and become our human shield. In return we do it for them and others; at least a friend would. But they cannot protect us forever, and sometimes we give up protecting them. Things change, umbrellas weaken and break, new ones are purchased. So if we lose our umbrella is it only our own fault if we get pissed on?

We cannot befriend everyone forever, and with broken friendships comes broken bonds. The mud may get thick, and the buckets of knowledge may spill. But we continue down this road. When we break relationships it cannot always be easy and we are bound to feel the rain. But where is the dry land? Will there even be any? The weather, thankfully, moves faster than we do, and so moves on pretty fast. The clouds may follow for some time to come but they do break and sometimes even in the deadliest of storms there comes a rainbow, a beacon of hope. A belief that somewhere in the future lies our pot of gold.

If we were to get that snapshot of life in the future, know where that pot of gold will be and see what life looks like with it, will it make us more determined or hinder our travels? For example, will picking up the pace and not seeing all around us on the way make us fall down somewhere along the way and become spoilt and insensitive when we get there? Or simply just deliver the goods faster? I believe that the experience of having little will make the best of having lots. And it is with this that we can weather any storms later on in life.

In London, the sun rarely shines, but when it does, it does with all its glory. However this is not to suggest that the sun isn’t always shining. Behind them clouds there is a roaring sun, and it is only paper-thin clouds that stop us from seeing it. Why do we let an enemy that we could simply blow over mean so much in our lives? Why do they even matter? Because the sun is always shining we just have to believe, like God, like spirits just because we cannot see something it does not mean it isn’t there. What if we did see our future? Would it not just disappoint us and make us impatient, like the Christmas present we know we have but cannot touch. So we can predict all we want, we can aim for a future, but like I’ve said before, this journey knows of no destination, there is no set path that we know of, so we continue down this road until we decide to turn, if we decide to turn. And that cannot be properly predicted. Like the weatherman our fair weather friend, sometimes even the best can get it horribly wrong.

P.S. 20th post! Really flowing now!