The Perfect Storm

In 1991 there was a storm, some called "The Perfect Storm". So intense was this storm that it was even made into a motion picture.

The NOAA people who are responsible for the forecasting of such events defined it as "a collision between a high pressure system, a low pressure system and the remnants from a dying hurricane" that created immense waves averaging 50 feet or higher with great waves as high as 100 feet on occasion. In its wake it devasted fishing off the Nova Scotia coast and cost the lives of several people.

It may sound odd, but I have always likened myself to the Perfect Storm. I am, at heart, a dying hurricane that creates pressure systems around me. It may sound strange but this has been the case a long long time. Since nature made me, as it created that storm, I hold no ill will towards myself, but often have to look back at the devastation I leave in my wake as I pass though. Much as a storm does, only I seem to be extraordinarily good at it and hence become in my mind "The Perfect Storm".

If ever you watch the news after a storm like this passes through, and maybe Hurricane Katrina is a good example, you will find there are people who "feel they have lost everything, feel they have to start again. Those who accept the storm and commit to rebuilding, those who recognize it is a force of nature that is unchangable and accept their present situation with resolve. There are also those who blame the government as though somehow they created the storm or are completely responsible for the aftermath".

A storm is a force of nature. It is neither good nor bad at its core. It is only put on a path that can lead it directly into harms way, or sometimes out into the harmless ocean.

In my case, most of my life is spent in the ocean, blowing around where there are no people. I am content with that, and since nature put me there, I accept that direction. But sometimes, I am turned inward toward land and when I hit it starts as a rain shower, grows to a thunderstorm, then to me. In my wake, I often leave little left to salvage. If I could control nature, I would prefer it sent me into the ocean all the time. But it is unrealistic to think a human being can spend a life isolated from people. Unless that choice is made consciously. I have made such choices in the past, but have hit the great natural resistance any storm would face if it had the ability to change its course or dimensions. It would cease to be itself. Nature returns its stability by turning it back into what it wanted it to be in the first place, a storm. In the case of "The Perfect Storm" in human form everything is exactly the same, only it gives up trying after a while to battle nature to change. Nature then makes it stronger. The results can be acceptable or devasting depending of where and when and who is affected.

I am that Perfect Storm in human condition. I leave destruction in my path most time when I go through, but there are some who accept THAT I am WHAT I am. That aside from a lot of blowing wind and tough structure, I am unchangable and consisitent when conditions are right."

It is fancy way of saying I fail more than I succeed, but being a product of Nature I can only act myself and cannot change who I am. It is also a fancy way of saying that most of my life has been isolated from those who can't see me for who I am or dismiss me outright. But that is Nature, and who am I to argue with things more powerful than I am.

In the End I am unsure where I belong. I no longer have the strength to fight nature and accept whatever direction it points me in.