UNPREDICTABLE CLOUDS

Yesterday, the NY Times had an article about a man who started something called the Cloud Appreciation Society. He'd been spending some time in Rome and as he looked at frescoes and religious paintings he noticed they were filled with clouds, masses of the soft billowing kind, but outside the Roman sky usually had very few clouds. 
     He was in Rome because he needed time off from publishing a magazine in London called "The Idler." He called it "literature for loafers" and advocated aimlessness, letting the imagination wander. In Rome, he thought about the clouds in the paintings and the cloudless sky and just got interested.
    Back in London, he began a detailed study of clouds and talked to everyone about them. Eventually, a friend invited him to give a lecture and, in trying to come up with an alluring title, he called it "The Inaugural Lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society." The lecture room was packed and afterwards people asked him how they could join the Society. He had to admit there wasn't one but soon fixed that. He created a website where people can post photos of clouds, trade information and, in exchange for $15, get a membership badge and certificate. There are now 40,000 members from all around the world. He's written a book about clouds that's been a great success and now his life is all about clouds.
     There are so many reasons to love this story. A deep interest and passionate study of what is possibly the most ephemeral thing in Nature, never fixed, always changing. The fact that this man noticed clouds and wanted to know about them. He didn't second guess himself or wonder what other people would say about his eccentric interest. He just went with it and a world of science, art and literature, not to mention people, opened up to him. Who could have predicted how far the simple act of noticing clouds would take him? Or that people all around the world would share his interest?
     Unpredictability.  We think we know where things are going or how all our efforts will turn out. Things, disappointing things we couldn't have predicted often come to pass and this is such a common occurrence there are common phrases for it: Man proposes and God disposes. Or from John Lennon: life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. We don't always get what we want. But this man's story shows that the opposite is also true. You don't know where things will lead and sometimes the unpredictable is a welcome surprise, even better than what you thought you wanted. 
     I can see that for me the challenge is to move forward without judgment or self-censorship, to allow myself to go wherever spirit leads me. I can stop being certain of the outcome of what I do. I can think of the unpredictable, even when it's something I wish hadn't happened, as simply a new set of circumstances to embrace and learn what I can. I can't be without opinion or desire but I can let things take their course and be all right no matter what.
     What a rich world the cloud man created; he found it because nothing was holding him back.