by Adapt Training and Development
I recently returned from a trip to North Carolina—a place that can be notoriously stormy in the summer, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. Big gray clouds roll in, rain lashes the screens and rattles the windows, and flashes of lightning alternate with big booms of thunder. Since Oregon is rarely stormy, I found the North Carolina stormy weather kind of enjoyable—up until the point when the lights go out or the swimsuit I left to dry on the porch gets blown into a tree.
So many weather phrases pepper our everyday speech. We “get wind of” something that is about to happen. We talk about “the calm after the storm” or “weathering the storm.” When several big things converge, we call it a “perfect storm.” Someone gets upset and “storms out of the room.” Storms are an interesting metaphor for the unavoidable rough periods that happen in our lives. There’s a change, a period of upheaval, a uncertainty about when it might end or how bad it might get. Finally, things calm and we feel some relief. Maybe the storm even cleared away a bit of debris and now things feel fresh and new.
The novelist Willa Cather said, “There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” This feels true to me. Our challenges can be our teachers. To quote Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami, “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.”
The song The Storms of Life by Randy Travis seems a fitting tribute to the storms in our lives and the calm that may come when they pass