I had to write this essay for a school assignment.
Vincent Van Gogh once said, “There is peace even in the storm.”
And while I don’t always agree with the post-impressionist era painter, I must admit that there is some truth in this. Storms are powerful forces of nature, capable of great destruction and with torrents of rain hammering down on rooftops and trees, the sound of a thousand tiny raindrops hitting the window panes and the dark pavement slick with water. There is indeed peace in the storm, yes, because you’re usually safe inside, protected, listening to the thunder and barrage of rain and seeing the far away flashes of lightning lighting up the otherwise dark sky.
It’s peaceful.
It’s peaceful in the sense that it is a majestic force of nature, and you are watching it in the safety of your own home. It’s peaceful as being sunk deep into the ocean, just you, and water, and the endless, oppressing blue. It is ravaging the areas around you, rain slamming into trees, wind whipping through the grass and sending things that aren’t bolted down completely airborne. Thunder stirs the very air, the drumroll of the heavens, shaking your bones and rousing your blood. You were probably afraid of the thunder, of the sheer raw power of it when you were younger, and naive, believing it could hurt you. But sounds are just sounds, until they aren’t. Lightning might flash through the sky, lighting it up with great hot bolts of power. You are safe from it, you think, because there are thousands of places for which it might land and it is unlikely it will hit you. To others, that might not be such a reassuring thought, but humanity is survived on these minuscule games of chance. So you sit back and watch, as the heavens light up, and you can sometimes pretend, as selfish as you are, that it is all for you. It feels like it has always been a part of you, the storm, and you think, yes, this is peaceful.
It is poetic too, poetic as the rising sun, but far more brutal and devastating. Raindrops dancing to a symphony, an orchestra of the children of wind, water, air, dancing endlessly to the drumbeat of the clouds we mortals can’t hear. Spiraling into the earth, dancing, white hot bolts of electricity flashing through the sky and lighting up their intricate spiraling footsteps. It’s a ballet of nature’s weeping tears, cascading on our rooftops. Lightning is a flashing spotlight, illuminating the stage. Thunder is the beat of the drums, keeping them in time, the backbone of the orchestra. The earth is their stage, a performance of nature, mourning something they don’t know. It is poetic, the drumming of the raindrops on the leaves, fallen dancers taking their last bow, sinking into the earth, a backstage hidden by velvet curtain foliage, just for thousands others to take their place on the airborne stage. It is certainly poetic, this aerial timeless dance.
It is calming, as well, the water surrounding you, a blanket, soothing you, calming you. Water has always been calming, a blue, heavy presence. The rain is just an ocean, falling from the sky. You might even open a window a bit, smelling the ozone, the sharp rush of the wind blowing your hair back a little, that specific smell of the rain, the freshness and earthiness and clarity of it. Did you know that scientists have coined the term petrichor to the very smell associated with the rain? Petrichor, such a strange, yet befitting name. It’s peaceful too, the smell I mean, the way it fills your lungs with a crisp, wet cold and settles into your bones, settling into your stomach. It’s chilly, bitingly so, but it’s a good sort of cold.
It settles your soul, the water, and you embrace the shiver willingly. It is indeed very calming.
Storms are beautiful, daring, peaceful, poetic and calming forces of nature, and that’s why storms are named after people.
They are truly
AWESOME.
