Stress Relief and Idle Thoughts

So today, I woke up and went about my day. Beautiful right? I find it extremely awesome that with all the pain and suffering in the world today that I can wake up and try to find one instance of happiness within myself and feed on that. During my half hour to twenty minute drive to work, I encounter everything on the spectrum of moods. I see nervous people, mean people, distracted people and on a very rare instance happy people.

So why am I so happy today? No, I didn't find a job with a living wage, and I don't have the day off from work. I am happy because of the weather, and I don't mean the buckets of sunshine that Pittsburgh almost never gets. I got to enjoy, a short lived but very emotional thunderstorm. Yes, you read right, I love thunderstorms, and this one in particular was extremely satisfying.

For the past few weeks I have been feeling this buildup of tension within myself, and the past couple days I have felt myself get closer and closer to my snapping point. Today however, I was rescued from a few days of laying in my room and watching sad movies just to cry. just around 3pm I heard the wind start to build and become more and more aggressive. Soon followed the rain and a few claps of thunder. Then from my window, I watched as a single bolt of lightning flies up into the sky, right across my vantage point. Through the winds and the rain I felt the tension drain from my body and just as that single bolt of lighting reached across the sky I felt the last of my troubles shatter.

I know for a fact I am not the only person drawn to violent thunderstorms or extreme weather. I by no means am a storm chaser, but there are plenty that are. I, like a lot of my friends are simply drawn to the release of a good storm. I believe this is because we, just like all other living creatures, are hard wired with instincts that tie directly into the earth. We can feel the storm on a subconscious level and find solace in the extreme nature of the entire act.

So you may ask, why do we destroy the earth if we are so wired into its patterns? Well I believe that we put so much time and energy into the seperation of ourselves from the rest of the creatures roaming this earth that we have fallen away from out instinctual desire to experience what is known as "the wild," and we keep working to dominate our environment. Everything from deforestation to weeding our gardens gives us the pleasure to say that we have dominated nature, but as I opened the door to let in my cat just before the storm, she brought with her a dead vole. It was a present to us. She, being a part of nature, wanted to give us the best present she could find, and that showed me that no matter how much we control nature and our environment, the circle of life is still shown to us in everyday life. Just as a spider finds a perfect corner to weave his web in our very own homes, we should realize that these creatures have adapted their ways to fit our actions, being that we are the focus of this circle of life for the time being. Cats bring presents to please their masters, spiders weave webs to feed themselves, and voles die to a predator on the hunt for the perfect morsel and somehow, it all ties back into us.

Sorry if you don't follow this post very easily, these are just the idle thoughts of mine as I prepare to leave once again for work.