A 74-YEAR-OLD CLOUD

     As I was watching some clouds carrying themselves across the sky today and slowly shifting their shapes, it occurred to me that I am a sort of cloud myself. I, too, am constantly changing, despite my deceptively fixed appearance. If people had seen me sitting outside this afternoon, they wouldn’t have seen the river of fresh thoughts flowing through me, each one new and special, each one making me someone slightly new. Nor would they have seen the cells in my body being purified or replaced, or the fresh oxygen bringing newness to my lungs, or the blood ferrying freshness to every part of my body. They would have seen a 74-year-old silvery guy staring at the sky, perhaps at a fluffy cloud that first looked like a lion, and then a ship, and then a sailing heart. They wouldn’t have noticed that his life was slightly new each moment. They wouldn’t have seen what was constantly being born inside him.