Raindrops

Ever spend time looking at the raindrops falling on a puddle of water? What do you see? Do you see just the raindrops? Does that evoke some feeling in you? Interesting when you contemplate on nothing. I did that the other day. And you know what happened? A wonderful world opened up to me.

The clouds were thick, dark and turgid to the East while the West was imbued with a hazy glow. The thunder was receding to the East as the continuous rain drops fell to the ground and there before me was a fairly large puddle of water. As the raindrops fell in their random, asymmetric fashion they fashioned something ethereal before my eyes. Hypnotic in nature and beguiling in form, some of the drops were large creating quite a stir on the surface of that puddle. Some of the ripples that flowed from the rain drops were larger and flowed outwardly in an ever-increasing circular fashion. The wavelets continued until they met opposing ones created by other large, intermediate or smaller drops . The net result was that they crashed into each other, mixing, merging and ultimately fading away.

I watched the surreal motion of this ebb and flow with the unceasing fall of the raindrops. And as I watched each droplet fall and create a ripple, a harmonic musical note emerged in my mind. Now I don’t think that would lead me into an analyst’s chair just yet, but come along for this short journey with me and you might find it interesting too. Anyway as the ripples formed and dissipated so did the notes and the symphony that emerged in my mind, was similar to Vivaldi’s Summer Sonatas Presto Movement #3.

 The grace, flow and rhythm all crushed into this velvety feel of comfort, in soothing, silky warmth. The large and the small ripples merging with each other created this symphonic masterpiece in my head. I wondered if Vivaldi had witnessed such a rainfall and the raindrops had evoked in him the same sensations as they were conjuring up in my head. If you haven’t yet have had the pleasure of listening to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” I would highly recommend it on a rainy day.

But then as I continued to watch the subtle and surreptitious transformation without any positive feed from my conscious mind, the raindrops suddenly began to represent the larger and smaller voices of famous people. I watched as some larger ripples grew in dimension spreading the wealth of their knowledge in their wake pressing against and sometimes overwhelming the little ripples. The larger ripples seem to stay for a longer period then the small ones, yet they all faded eventually leaving the memory of their existence. It brought to mind great philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle and Scientists like Galileo, Newton and Einstein and artists like Michelangelo and Rembrandt. All of who are memories yet they cast large ripples in human history. They drowned out everyone to rise to the peak in human evolution in their art or science and during their existence all else was bare, bland and colorless.

And as surely as that thought had surfaced, another one took its place. The ripples now represented people’s voices. Some loud while others soft and barely assuming. The loud are heard and the soft ones mix with the background noise. Yet here the dichotomies of the value-based system seem to come to an end. Just as the larger ripples had represented momentous occasions inspired by people of great repute, this time the base note of the symphonic movement was in play. The higher notes although made the impression, the underlying base note of the smaller ripples supplied the memorable cadence. The overall joy and essence of all beauty lay in that pitch and moment of the convergence. It mattered not, the size of the ripple, nor the note or the voice, what mattered was the efforts of each ripple that inspired the richness of all creation.

In life as on that beautiful rainy day with the sun just peaking from the West and the dark clouds receding to the East, a symphony of great relevance was played out on a puddle of water.

Raindrops fall

And break the calm

Ripples that roll

Spread the yarn

Each ripple

A vestigial note

Collectively askance

Of a glorious symphony

Each ripple

A lone voice

Melding together

Into a beautiful humanity

Each ripple

A memory

Weaved together

In the human history

Raindrops fall

Each with its own

Power and cadence

Signifying nothing