Friday Ramble - Collision

"If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it."
Toni Morrison

The word collision comes from the Latin collisio, collidere meaning "to dash or strike together, a compound of com meaning together and lædere meaning to "to strike". For some reason, my mind connects the unrelated but similar sounding Latin laetare, the singular imperative form of laetari meaning "to be joyful".

One thinks of collision as violent interaction, but it is not always so. The striking of a clapper against the inner wall of its bell, the creak of an old mill wheel as water, wood and stone converse within its slow, ceaseless and seemingly effortless rounding, the joyous meeting of rocks and falling water in rapids or a waterfall, willows on the ridge bending in flowing Tai Chi movement as they talk with the wind on a late summer day - all are collisions of a sort, but interactions (or contentions) without violence for the most part.

I can hear wind horses fluttering in the garden as I tap away here this morning.  It is most likely the lingering legacy (or residue, another fine word) of many years spent toiling away in the entrails of large urban corporations, but I sometimes have to remind myself to treat life's encounters as opportunities for listening, flowing and peaceful connection rather than endless tourneys of collision, contention and at times, blazing fireworks. The prayer flags are excellent reminders.

The task is one of surrendering to life and the wind and learning how to ride them, how to bend and flow like wind horses or bamboo rather than treating everything as an occasion for shouting, head banging and collision. Bamboo doesn't grow this far north, but my short mantra for the ongoing exercise is "bamboo". Between health issues and computer gremlins, there have been many times in recent months when I trotted out the mantra and used it - ardently.