'Clouds' are all the buzz this week as the pop culture film, Cloud Atlas, opened in theaters. The film left me disappointed, but I was able to exit the theater with one philosophical nugget from the book by David Mitchell: "My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” ― The truth of that statement as it applies to 'meaning of life' questions led me to ask, what the heck is a Cloud Atlas? Since authors and filmmakers are known for giving away clues in a title, it seemed like a good starting point to find out if there were any other philosophical nuggets worth mining.
Interestingly enough, a cloud atlas was an early tool for studying the weather- a collection of visual images to identify different types of clouds and how those clouds predict weather patterns. We humans, like clouds, fall into some pretty predictable patterns ourselves. We create emotional storms via the 'butterfly effect' from one tiny negative thought, leading to a not-so-tiny negative act, leading to a massive misunderstanding. It would be nice to have an atlas to navigate around particularly dangerous swells. (Maybe Twitter and Facebook are currently serving this purpose since I have now learned to steer clear of the angriest posts and people.)
Conversely, a single positive thought (as in right now -this second) may generate a single kind act - which could build a wave of kindness surging beyond any one lifetime. Clear heads and clear skies seem connected in ways that parallel dark thoughts and dark skies, yet our world is absolutely defined by the existence of both. Our planet and our souls cannot flourish without the changing pressures. Good things and bad things happen because the flower needs the rain. It is silly to believe any one of us could thrive sitting under a perpetually cloudless sky. The challenge is to avoid getting blown over by approaching storms. In order to withstand the weather life brings, we need to mimic the eye of the storm. Find that place of relative calm within. With this mastered, we become empowered to understand what it takes to be the pressure system actually causing sunny skies to follow, for ourselves and everyone else in our atmosphere.
