Cloud Gazing at a Stoplight

When a red light offers the gift of breath.

Cloud Gazing at a Stoplight

Do you notice the clouds? Like, every day. Do you look at the clouds?

I almost didn’t see the clouds today.

Sitting at a stoplight, I stared at the red circle. Looked at the car next to me. Watched cars going past me in a different direction. Turned up the radio. Reached for my phone (I know, right?). Put my phone down and looked at the miles until empty.

I looked at the red light again, it was so close to me, everything was so close, closed in. So closed in that I’m not even sure I was breathing. Maybe I was holding my breath.

Then I let my eyes adjust to see beyond the redlight and there they were, three white clouds hanging in the sky.

How is it possible that we live with clouds and yet miss them entirely so often?

That tiny little adjustment of my eyes, to see beyond the closed-in space I had made for myself while I sat there waiting for my turn to drive, made everything different. Suddenly my breath came in, deep into my belly, like it was the first breath of the day.

You know what I mean by like it was the first breath of the day, right? I mean, yes, of course, you have been breathing or you wouldn’t be reading this right now. So your breath has obviously been there. What I’m talking about is breath…that deep and gentle one that feeds your body and your spirit, stopping your mind, if only for a brief second.

Wait, my breath can stop my mind? It can make it all go quiet, even just for a minute?

Sure, but you already know that, really. Maybe you have forgotten. We forget so much.

Even when we are surrounded by human-made things: the interior of our car, roads, streetlights, buildings, billboards, other cars, engines running, horns honking, the pull of a phone pinging…and we feel like that giant human-made apparatus is going to completely close in on us and our breath is so short and shallow that it almost feels like we’re not quite breathing, there is always a way out.

A way back to breath.

There are so many things that give me this gift and they ask nothing in return: the sky, a tree in the distance, daffodils poking out of the ground, the moon, two birds on a wire.

Such gentle reminders that I am bigger than the closed-in space, and that I can, right now, breathe again.

I almost didn’t see the clouds today because my vision was limited to things that were so close, so closed-in. That tiny shift of my eyes made a giant shift in my body, and just as the breath pulled in, my mouth softened to a smile, my shoulders loosened, and suddenly there I was, all the pieces of me back together as one.

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A challenge for cloud gazing at a stoplight.

Notice what your eyes do at a stoplight. Notice your breath, your jaw, your shoulders, your legs. We are conditioned to always be “doing” something, even at a stoplight, checking an email, opening an app, marking off our to-do list in our minds, freaking out because we’re going to be late. Our bodies are so filled with all these things we’re supposed to be doing and all the things surrounding us that they feel so tight. Small. Anxious. Disconnected. You can’t change anything at a stoplight, which is the perfect reason to accept it as a gift. To breathe.

Look at that cloud the next time you’re at a stoplight, really look at it, how it is so patient and gentle, how it changes so effortlessly, shifting as it needs to shift. 

Let your breath in. And slowly out.

You’ve got this. And your breath always has you. 

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