Tonight the setting sun produced a pink, pale blue, grey and peach symphony of colour as I drove along. Hanging in the sky were some clouds that shaded into grey and black eventually. As I watched the light fade and the sun disappear for the next 12 or so hours I wondered what the clouds make of us. They float majestically above us going about their business of transporting water from one place to the next. Drifting along, blown by any passing breeze, they have the ultimate ‘birds-eye’ view of humanity.

It may seem an odd question to surface but I enjoy considering how we might be perceived by different beings. Sometimes thinking about what a random visitor from another planet would make of us can shake me out of assumptions that underpin how I take my reality for granted. I first tried this through my reading of science fiction. I was fascinated at how the authors tried to imagine different worlds and how, sometimes, they completely failed to move the story away from the duality that we experience as humans. What would a world be like where the beings only had an energy body, or where there was no gender at all, or where there were six beings that made up the conciousness  of the whole unit. Lots of authors did try to write these scenarios so I had my viewpoint challenged plenty of times.

Then I started to explore what spirituality meant to us human beings. In my search for understanding I connected with the conciousness of trees. I found their view of us very interesting. Trees make no real distinction between humans. We are gad flies who flit past so very fast that distinguishing one from another takes too long for a tree. They are long lived, slower timed beings who measure the rise and fall of life force by seasons not hours or days. They believe in the correct order of things and are very patient. Trees welcome their connection to the animals and plants who live alongside them. There is a symbiosis of energy, or a sharing, if you like, that ensures that the trees and their companions serve each other for a greater good. I love that the trees, especially the older ones, are deep thinkers. If you ask a tree a question you might have to wait weeks or months for a complete answer to emerge.

So now I ponder clouds. What do we look like from their point of view. There I was in my steel box, moving along a strip of road, along with others, all of us driving the same direction, lighting up the night with our specks of white and red. What do the clouds imagine we are doing? Do we appear to be regimented? At certain points some of the steel boxes peel off onto other strips of road. More join in. There is a dancing exchange of lights as one car overtakes another. Why do we do it? What purpose is served by trundling here and there. To a cloud that is drifting where the wind takes it what does all this tram track activity represent? If I were a cloud I would wonder why we have chosen to focus our efforts to move from one place to another in such straight lines. Or to have so many individual containers making the journey. What is it about being separate from each other but all headed in the same direction that we need? As I thought this through the image that came to me was of blood vessels racing along an artery (we even call roads arterial routes). Do our roads echo the reality that is inside us? Are we stuck with only inventing  the things that we can concieve because they are based on ourselves?

The cloud might wonder why we can’t drift in a clump of energy to the exact place we are supposed to be for the purpose of serving everyone. That would be a very different way to experience humanity. If we joined forces with those who were headed in a direction we liked or felt drawn to perhaps we would enjoy a very different journey. Maybe we could live our lives doing things we were passionate about rather than sticking to the tram tracks. And sometimes we could rise above all that we were doing to ensure we got the biggest picture about our lives. There is something to be gained from considering how we look to the clouds. It awakens us to all of the restrictions we have accepted on our reality. Only a few great thinkers have escaped the regimentation of our structured life. And even less have dared to actually step out from the consensus view of ‘reality’. Yet heir ability to see things from a different point of view has produced amazing leaps forward for all of us.

I wonder if we will ever teach our children to look at life from a tree, cloud or other point of view. I know we tell ourselves that we are encouraging them to be free thinkers. Then we send them off to large establishments whose sole purpose is to turn out people who think inside the box. I am glad I’ve learned to think outside the box to some degree. I hope for a generation who will tear up the box and make something new with it.

Day 121 of my blogging challenge.