Storm watch

So lightning struck the city of Phoenix 6,500 times in one hour last night. Now, that's the kind of storm that I was missing while I lived up in Seattle. The kind of storm that grabs you by the lapels and demands that you sit down and respect it for a little while. It's very easy to get comfortable with our SUV and latte existence and every once in a while it is exceedingly refreshing to have your day to day, neat and tidy little life shaken up by something so massive and primal and wondrous and scary - and it to get it in your own home to boot! Usually for that kind of experience you need a roadtrip or a good hike or to travel to a different country, but when nature brings it's A-game directly to your living room you have an immense sense of perspective forced on you. We are not so different from our ancestors who believed that God was in the storm. We are not so far from our dependence on capricious weather cycles to prevent us from flood or famine. We with our gizmos and trinkets have not in fact advanced humanity in any particularly meaningful way. It is only blinding arrogance that prevents us from being moved by compassion to action to improve the lot of our fellow man, who have not even the security of our meager defences.
While may have learned to make our small crafts more stable, we still have no control over the waves that rock our lives. And it doesn't actually matter how protected the individual is, beacuse the only true measure of security we have is provided by lashing ourselves to one another and being committed to each other's wellbeing. Knowledge and technology and luxuries be damned, humanity's greatest asset is still humanity.

-Ian