Chasing the Wind

Sometimes we live life like we're chasing the wind. We fill our lives with one thing that feels nice and pleasing until it ends. Then we look and wait until we can find the next gratifying thing to fill our time with.

I remember being a kid in a neighborhood full of other kids who loved the endless possibilities of playing outdoors. We could play imaginary games for hours on end, stopping only when we were called in by our mothers or from pure exhaustion. There were those times in the hot summers when we just couldn't make our legs move around anymore. In my front yard were three towering pine trees huddled together. The neighborhood kids, my two brothers, and I would gather under those pine trees because the wind, whether it was in our imaginative minds or not, blew stronger and cooler there. We knew we could find refreshing amidst the pines, and then we could go back to making fun for ourselves.

Well, aren't we like that sometimes? Chasing the wind. The wind can't really be chased. We can feel it. We can find where it blows the strongest. But we can't catch it. We can't really follow it. It's too elusive. We know it's there because we can feel its effects- something we all learned as children. The wind provides refreshing in the uncomfortable heat of the summer. But it's always moving on. It's there; then it isn't. We can enjoy and appreciate it while it lasts, and even search it out in the shadows. Even so, when the wind is gone on those sizzling summer days, so is our pleasure in it.

When we search for fulfillment in things that don't last, our delight fades along with them. Yet, we do it. We do it because we know we can find immediate, yet temporary refreshing under the pines when what we really need is to stop playing and get in the air conditioning and drink 8 oz. of water and have some home-cooked macaroni and cheese with chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Then, we'll have the energy we need to go back out and play hard. We can play hours longer this time. We don't have to crowd beneath the pines periodically for reenergizing. We have water in our veins and food in our bellies.