Thar She Blows

A short course on force and feathers

We rewatched Forrest Gump a while ago and couldn’t believe that movie is 30 years old.

I didn’t actually pick up on the thesis the first time… the questions of randomness and chance versus destiny and intention.

Are we just floating? Or is there a determined course in which a wind blows us along?

Probably a bit of both. We all have that force and a feather.

Sometimes that force whistles in on a gale that’s impossible to ignore, lifting your skirt or wrecking your hair. Quickly going from annoying but manageable to loud and destructive. A WTF kind of wind shrieks and shatters with divorce, loss, death. Things you didn’t see coming.

Other times, it shows up in ways we just don’t notice. The April breeze that softly touches your face, tickles the wind chimes, encourages the clouds to move faster.

I’ve got my own story about a wind I almost missed.

Looking for my first job in advertising, my friend Robyn referred me to a receptionist position at a satellite office for a North Dakota agricultural agency in St. Paul. I nailed that interview. Hit it off with the manager and walked out certain I had the job. I was already decorating my desk.

They chose someone else.

I went home and was in the fetal position for a fortnight, certain my career was over before it started.

A short time later I got a call to interview at PMH, working for Dave Peterson, the brilliant mind behind Target’s success. That job opened the door to Martin/Williams, where I went from coordinator to copywriter, got set up with my husband, had Millie and made lifelong friends.

My entire life unfolded from what I now recognize as a prevailing wind- the consistent kind that quietly forms the landscape over time- in this case, one that blew me out of St. Paul and into my own life being shaped by something that knew exactly where it was going even when I absolutely did not.

Today is Palm Sunday and the wind metaphor might get weird but stick with me.

For my heathen friends (you know who you are) Palm Sunday is the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem. The crowd went wild. They laid down their cloaks, waved palm branches, the whole production. They thought the King had finally arrived to fix everything.

He showed up on a donkey.

Not a warhorse or throne. A donkey. The vibe was completely wrong by every human measure of how a rescue should look. And then the week went sideways in ways nobody (not even somebody like George R.R Martin) could see coming. The celebration collapsed into betrayal, devastation, and darkness so complete everyone who loved him wondered if they’d just been wrong.

A Sirocco blew in and filled the air with crazy dust and all visibility was impaired.

What Easter actually is, underneath the jelly beans and Pinterest chicken deviled eggs is a story about a wind that knew exactly where it was going even when everyone standing in it was completely lost. The destruction wasn’t the point- the redirection was.

The thing that looked like the end was the whole beginning.

Which is, if you think about it, a lot like GL Ness. (Please note, I remain very humble even as I compare my story to Jesus’s)

Here’s my version of a wind advisory even though I’m not Belinda Jensen; just someone with strong feelings about meteorological metaphors:

Lean into the gale. When something blows your life apart, get curious before you get bitter. You can take cover for a while. But don’t miss what it’s trying to tell you.

Feel for the breeze. A trade wind doesn’t announce itself as much as extend a quiet invitation. Get still enough to feel it. The best things in life often arrive unannounced, through the wrong door, at the wrong time, (wearing the wrong outfit.)

Pay attention to what shows up instead. When what you expected doesn’t arrive, look at what does. It might be the best job you ever had hiding behind the one you didn’t get.

I don’t think any of our feathers are just floating.

There’s been a wind blowing through each of our lives since the day we were born. Squalls that screeched in and claimed our full attention, and warm soft gusts we almost missed because we were too busy, too certain, too distracted to feel them on our face.

The wind is always talking. Always moving every single one of us, in its own ridiculous, mysterious and occasionally donkey-shaped way, exactly where we belong.

All we have to do is learn to feel it.