Every dark cloud seems to bring flooding rain. Every new pest seems to threaten unimaginable devastation. Every day pushes another tall tree to the ground. Every bird, flower, and insect seems hurried, as if rushing against a new kind of urgency.
I suppose this could all be my imagination, a magical trick of a mind that keeps hearing dire warnings about the consequences of immense and rapid change.
Meanwhile, the wise will argue that change is constant and inevitable, that fear is simply ignorance and uncertainty. I cannot control the future any more than I can predict it. Thus, I shall halt my worry about the unknown in order to calmly observe what is right here, right now, no matter how distorted the image may be compared to what I know of the past. Only then — and through the careful, mindful, purposeful action which follows — can I hope to know what peace actually looks like.
