The Allure of a Thunderstorm

What is it that makes a thunderstorm so fascinating? Am I the only one who often finds myself in a pensive mood when gazing into the blackness of a summer storm? More often than not I feel drawn to a storm; there seems to be something calling me to what the storm is, what it represents, and what it's capable of.

I think more than anything, a thunderstorm makes us realize, often times abruptly, how small and insignificant we are against the backdrop of the rest of the universe. We, as humans, often like to make ourselves lords of everything we encounter. Anything we're confronted with that's either unknown or potentially harmful is thrust away as quickly as possible. The finitude of our own existence, above all else, is the one thing that most seek to put away from themselves and pay no heed to.

Perhaps this is why it often feels so good to stare into the bleak darkness of the coming storm. For me, the storm is full of meanings; not only is it beautiful and magnificent, but it can also be seen as a metaphorical representation of where we're all inevitably headed as mortal beings, whether we admit it or not. The coming storm represents chaos in its most literal form, and I often try as hard as I can to embrace the chaos, if only to feel, for the briefest of times, what it truly means to be a human being.

Dream, Dream, Dream

It's almost always trite to talk about your dreams with other people. They're the ultimate "you-had-to-be-there" - not only do they not make any sense to anyone but yourself, but there's also a very good chance that no one will care at all that you had a dream last night where you were naked at your school and Jeff was there, but it didn't look like your school and Jeff was an octopus.

With that being said, I'm not going to lay out any dream specifics here for no one to care about; rather, I want to talk about that quality that almost everyone has felt after a dream. That particular, uncanny quality that's felt after a very vivid dream - there something about a dream that resonates with things that are happening in real life, whether it be a personal matter, work, whatever, that makes it stick around after sleeping is done with. I often pause and think, after a particularly vivid dream, that dreams are really one of the only things in our lives that can be truly paradoxical - they have completely no objective interaction with reality, yet at the same time they can influence all the same.

Dreams are an interesting beast in this sense. They fade away like nothing's happened after we've had time to go through our day, but in that one instant, that brief moment upon wakening that the fine line between what is "real" and what is "unreal" becomes blurred, these vivid dreams can mean very, very much.