BE UPLIFTED IN 2018
HAPPY NEW YEAR.
At this time of year the media seems full of articles about new year’s resolutions and setting your intentions for change. I am not going to write urging you to make a strict resolution but I will suggest one pleasant occupation for you to try more often in the year ahead – and that’s to look up more. I don’t just mean take your eyes off the pavement and look around at the world, I mean really look UP. At clouds.
Clouds have the capacity to bring happiness into our lives in many ways. Sometimes they bring a sense of awe, especially when involved in a sunset of course. Research has shown that having a sense of awe is good for our wellbeing. They can bring immense calm and rest – what can beat gazing in silence at clouds as they cross the sky, merging and mutating, putting you in an almost meditative state that gives rise to a tranquil mind? Clouds can bring fun and joy into your life when you watch clumpy cotton wool cumulus clouds become identifiable shapes. Emptying your brain of all its busy-ness and chatting whilst cloud-watching can also encourage creative thoughts to pop up spontaneously from a different part of your brain that responds to silence.
Whatever the reasons, clouds make us feel good.
The Cloud Appreciation Society is a fabulous, fun organisation that treasures the beauty of clouds and all that they give us. You can explore their website here The Cloud Appreciation Society and follow them on Facebook or by email to receive a daily cloud picture. Their photographs and captions are at different times stunning, funny, and informative. You can follow The Cloud Appreciation Society for free or you can pay for membership to get more goodies, especially a little device to identify clouds yourself if you wish to. The Society is also a pleasant and friendly community to connect with.
However you engage with clouds I highly recommend you do more of it in the year ahead, especially if you need cheering up. I bet it will be uplifting – which is, of course, just the right word. Happy sky watching for 2018.
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I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change but I cannot die.
From ‘The Cloud’ (1820) by Percy Bysshe Shelley