08 Feb A Million Pounds
A single, giant raindrop landed in the center of my car’s windshield.
Splat.
The sky was a brilliant shade of blue. The sun was shining. A single, puffy white cloud hovered effortlessly in the sky. Not one dark storm cloud was in sight.
The raindrop appearing out of nowhere didn’t make sense to me. I kept thinking about it during the day.
Later, I told Emma about the mystery of the raindrop. She nodded, listening as I explained the blueness of the sky and the absence of any storm clouds. It was when I told her about the puffy white cloud that she solved the mystery. “Did you know that most clouds weigh over a million pounds?” she said. “Sometimes they get too heavy from all of the water they hold and a raindrop comes out.”
A million pounds. It sounds impossible to believe something could hold that weight and move so freely.
But then I consider how it is to hold so many of the things in our lives — the overwhelming heaviness of grief or the paralyzing weight of painful memories — while we keep moving.
There are so many people who are doing their very best to hold it all together, often making it look effortless, while inside feeling overwhelmed by the unbearable weight of life’s challenges.
And perhaps there are those days when a single teardrop might slip from someone in the same way a single raindrop slipped from the heavy cloud over my car. Maybe someone catches a glimpse. Or maybe it falls without anyone noticing.
That single raindrop was a good reminder of the reason it’s important to be gentle with each other. An awareness that we are here together, sharing space and yet so often unaware of what others are going through and the heaviness of what they are carrying inside.