You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain
One day several summers ago I lay down on a bench to look up at the sky. As is typical on a hot, late summer afternoon, billowy clouds were drifting lazily across a baby blue backdrop.
I recalled summer days from my childhood, lying on the trampoline for hours with my friend Johnny, staring skyward. We saw everything in those clouds from ninja turtles to power rangers to killer whales.
Returning from the comfort of sweet memories, I looked at the clouds and saw only...clouds. I felt disappointment, and even a bit of panic as I realized that I could see no shapes in the clouds. Where had my imagination gone? Had I really "grown up" so much that my mind could no longer create an imaginary world in the sky?
Determined to regain my ability to imagine, to open my mind, to shift dependence from my eyes to my imagination, I stared at the clouds. But the longer I stared, the more like clouds they became.
At last, I saw what I had been looking for...a big, fluffy elephant. Relieved, I tilted my head back and saw a space ship. A monkey. A balloon.
This experience changed my life. I must never close out the beauty, the simple joy, and the wonder of childlike imagination.
Clouds
Clouds change. The bring shade, coolness. They bring rain, snow, sleet hail, water. They give life.
Nearer to the ground they conceal. They deceive. They frighten.
Full of majesty they billow. Full of darkness they rage. Full of light they inspire.
They are an annoyance, a blessing. They taunt the thirsty desert. They saturate the soggy valleys.
They excite imagination or reveal the lack thereof.
They come from nowhere.
They vanish with a gust of wind.
They paint the sky with life.
They intimidate.
They block light, they filter it, reflect it, frame it.
They stifle cheeriness. They burn like fire!