Rain & Trees

Picture: Find Your Dream - Rain Painting by Joanna Smielowska

As I spent 20 minutes sitting in our balcony today, looking up at the water-filled clouds above, roaring, thundering above, almost teasing the trees on the ground below with the promise of rain, yet never yielding to the trees' hopes, I realized that it's a lot like what we face in our lives, isn't it? The way we expect love, a certain kind of love, especially in return from some chosen few people and the wait for it is brings us an almost painful joy. No? Well, let me put it that way. Those conversations (online or offline) that you have with a person you wish to have a claim on (not always a bad thing, I think) before you actually say those words, aren't they proof of this? That when you desperately want rain and the clouds have the power to make it rain but still hold back, while you do get upset every now and then, there's a different kind of pleasure that that wait gives. No? Just me? Nevermind then.

Back to the trees hoping for rain and the unyielding clouds above: Other than the wait and desire that the trees exhibited for the rain, what I also kind of felt look at them is the joy they'd experience when the clouds finally give in to their wishes. And while a snobby cloud would say they sent the rain down purely for the sake of the expectant trees, the truth is, they'd also feel a kind of lightness, won't they? I mean, they'd been holding on to all that water, litres and litres of it, (some would say almost as heavy as expectations, some would say) so wouldn't that feel unbelievably good to let go of it all? To finally be able to breathe again without someone else's expectations and hopes and wishes constantly pulling you down? It would, I suppose. But how would I know, I've never been a cloud or had the same freedom or boundaries as them. * Sigh *

It's simple moments like these, when the bookworm inside of me actually creates stories in my head with trees and clouds as the protagonists, that I feel grateful for the simple joys of reading. The time I spent in the balcony today marvelling at this scene almost made me want to start a book like Overstory or The People in The Trees or something with trees on its cover, if not really in it.