Sic Semper Tyrannis

NOT the Saddest Thing I've Ever Seen

All right, I know yesterday’s post was a bummer. So, before I get called out as Mr. Doom and Gloom, let me say that I realize that life isn’t all sad. There are good moments too. In fact, it seems to me that life is constantly in flux between moments of hope, moments of despair, and moments of “normalcy,” for lack of a better term. (It’s kind of like how the church calendar has “ordinary” time.) And whether or not our time on the planet is measured out exactly in thirds amongst these categories is beyond me and probably largely subject to each person’s perspective, I guess. All that to say that I’ll balance yesterday’s bummer with something a little sweeter today.

There are times when you really feel “connected” with your fellow man/woah!man. Every now and then, there are moments when you really do feel like “no man is an island entire of itself,” as John Donne said, and strangers become fellow travelers. One time I was shopping at Mars Music on another rainy day and I noticed that big groups of store employees were heading out the front door. And so I couldn’t help but get caught up in the mass filing out and as I walked closer to the exit, I noticed a little huddle of customers and employees standing right outside the front door, looking up, eyes trained on the same thing in the sky: a double rainbow. If I remember right, it looked like a giant M. I guess God was saying that he doubly-promised not to flood the world again, if what my mom always told me about rainbows was true. Maybe God was saying, “No, seriously guys, I promise.”

But the natural phenomenon in the sky wasn’t half as interesting as what was all around me- a good nine or ten total strangers silently looking at the sky in wonder, totally quiet because the irregularity of it all was a given. No one dared ruin the moment with a sarcastic comment or a “well, how ‘bout that?” To me, it was a sacrosanct moment; a moment in which all strangers gathered there had the same fascination. Those moments are rare, my friends.

Would anyone else care to share a “saddest/happiest thing I’ve ever seen?”

posted by Mike @ 12:32 PM