Clouds

A great reminder in mindfulness, taught to my kids

We were on our evening walk, the sky doing that thing it does at sunset when everything turns gold and magical. Ari suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, completely awestruck. She stood completely still, looked up, and said:

“The clouds. They’re moving the sky. It’s orange and it is beautiful. LOOK!!!”

I stood beside her and we stayed there for a moment, together with Miles, just watching.

Then I said to both of them: do you remember what we talk about with our feelings? How they’re like clouds? When you don’t look carefully, clouds seem like they’re always there - fixed, still, hanging over us. When we have big, difficult feelings, they can feel that way too. Like they’ll never move and that they will always feel that way.

But if you look closely, you notice the clouds are always moving. Some drift quickly across the sky. Some move so slowly you almost can’t tell. But they’re all moving. They always pass, just like our feelings.

Some of our feelings move away quickly. Some take longer, especially the heavy ones. But they always pass. They come, and they go.

When we are having tough time, we can witness our feelings the way we witness the sky. Just looking, no judgment, there’s nothing we need to do or fix. Just watching them move through.

We are not our feelings. We are witnesses to them.

We stood there a little longer, the three of us, watching the orange clouds drift.