Last Saturday I had a “cloudy day”. I learned this term later on in the weekend by reading a series of tweets from Carl Richards that I’m sharing today as I feel they are perfect in expressing how I too felt.
From the start of the day on Saturday, I felt really down. This happens for me from time to time, rarely, but it has, over time, occurred often enough that I know not to compound this by trying to “fix” it, to layer thinking upon thinking to try to work out why I might be feeling that way, to try to solve it.
So, I “mooched” through my morning, but knew I had plans to meet a friend in the afternoon. On the way, I went to a market and bought some gifts to take when I (finally) get to visit Cayman in a few weeks time. As I then walked out of the market the clouds lifted. That’s the only way I can describe it. Just as the clouds appeared that morning, they lifted in the afternoon.
As I sat with my good friend, I shared how my day had felt, then we simply sat and spent time together looking out at the view over the River Thames as we supped on cask ale and, literally, watched as the clouds outside in the sky lifted and the day cleared.
What does all of that mean?
Perhaps as simple as a reminder that we are human beings, not human “do-ings“, that we can’t rationalise everything about human existence.
So, here are Carl Richards’ words:
Sometimes I get sad. Crazy…I know. The sadness seems to come for no real reason. Seems to roll in like the clouds, or rainy weather. I didn’t do anything wrong, and there’s nothing to fix. It’s just cloudy.
The fact that there’s nothing to fix is a great blessing and a massive frustration at the same time. A blessing because that means nothing is broken. I’m not broken. No one around me is broken or wrong. Nothing to apologize for, nothing to fix.
And…at the same time, it can be super frustrating because I’m a fixer. I find solutions… But when clouds roll in there’s nothing I can do to change or fix that. Turns out no one can. Not only is this frustrating to me, it can be really frustrating to people around me because they want to help. They want to fix it. If someone around you feels sad you desperately want to help. Normally helping means doing something to fix the problem. But here…there’s no problem. It’s just clouds. So what do we do?
We just sit. We create space. We allow it to be cloudy. There’s a model for this in the New Testament. When Christ was about to go into the Garden he took his 3 best friends and asked them to “watch and wait”. He asked them just to be there. “Tarry with me…”
So when the clouds roll in…when I’m sad…I’ve learned that it’s just cloudy weather and I just need my best friends to sit with me. And don’t we all? Good friends and family with us to watch and wait. Nothing else will do.
Carl Richards on Twitter