Simple Pleasures: Cloud watching

My favourite cloud of 2021

With the return of Spring, we're back to that time of year when the sky moves into focus -- or maybe my perspective does. Probably the latter, because as the seasons change, I find myself spending more time outside when the air is warmer, the light is brighter, the winds are softer, and the skies are bluer.

I don't know about you, but my eyes are drawn more often to clouds in warmer seasons. In days of deep-freeze, I'm so huddled into my furry-fringed hooded jacket that it's hard to really look around. But on warm blue-sky days, clouds steal the show.

I have always loved the fluffy masses of mist that float across the sky, and trying to see things in them. Being born and raised on the prairies, I somehow feel sky in my bones, if that makes any sense, probably because it was the biggest thing around when my family lived in a very flat place during my childhood. 

Sky is still the biggest thing around, but when our focus is this earth-bound dimension in which we live, sometimes we forget to look up to see those white cotton puffs, undulating grey waves edged with pink/purple/silver/gold, or towering dark cumulonimbus monsters with tongues of lightning. And really, that's a pity. There's so much to see!

My cousin Charlotte is a cloud watcher. Every so often she posts her own images of clouds that take my breath away, with the tag #cloudsarefrequentlyawesome (you won't find that on twitter, because it's a special Charlotte thing). How I love her posts and appreciate her tendency to notice the extraordinary beauty in ordinary things that, too often, we take for granted. Especially a sky full of clouds.

Clouds are poems just waiting to be noticed, as the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society expresses so well in this video below. Having our heads in the clouds now and then is good for the soul, for sure. 

Enjoy the clouds today, and if you can't get outdoors, check out the ones highlighted in this lovely eleven minute video. Some of them are quite amusing!

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Simple Suggestion #68... Lie on the grass and watch the clouds

Watching clouds has been one of my favourite simple things to do ever since I was in Grade Eleven. One of the books in the Catholic school Religion 25 curriculum at that time was Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977, Dell, ISBN 0-440-34319-4) by Richard Bach, the guy who wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The book is still one of my favourites because it contains the "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul," which is a series of wonderful quotations like, "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours," and "The bond that links you and your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do family members grow up under the same roof." And dozens of others. But I digress.

At one point in the book (p. 116) the two main characters are practicing vaporizing clouds. Richard challenges Don to vaporize the biggest, meanest looking cloud, and they have a five second discussion about it, and by the time their discussion is over, Don has completely vaporized the cloud. Richard looks up, sees that it's gone, and is miffed. Funny. So that summer I spent a lot of time vaporizing clouds. Just little ones, mind you. I'd pick a wisp on the edge of a fluffy white cumulus, and just watch it dissipate from the power of my concentration on it.

No, I don't really imagine that I can vaporize clouds, but it's a nice thing to try to do on a warm summer's day when nothing is pressing. We're so used to being busy, doing so much, running so hard. How often do we give ourselves permission to do nothing? Not often enough.

So even if you don't feel like watching clouds, give yourself a little break today, permission to do nothing for a little while. You deserve it! And if you've never read Richard Bach's book, I'd recommend it. Here's one more quotation: "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however."

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.