Via Justine De Fant

People often speak of the quiet before the storm– before gray clouds flood the streets with downpour over the cascade of rolling thunder, before oceans reign high past our expectations and travel through the cobbled pavements we walk with solemn steps, before rain falls from melting clouds and create a cacophony of hurried bullets on tin roofs, before the tempest.

Yet what of the distant stillness after the chaos? When order has given way to destruction and all stand in silence to wonder, is it over?

We take in the world, one scene at a time, wondering will it ever really be?
Though I’m but a budding sprout in a garden of sunflowers, ever-seeking to turn my face towards the warmth, I know that the dismal clouds are inevitable and hurricanes will crash over us just as often as they will not. There is no escape from the nature of an eternal cycle– of the bad followed by the good, of destruction followed by peace followed by chaos once more and so on, of that turning wheel of life.

But the beautiful part of such is that we are struck by the force of acceptance of the unknown, of realizing that the answers to every question in our souls will either come at a time that the universe finds most optimal to the progression of our being or will go unanswered, taken to the grave and perhaps resurrected in the next life, rising from the forgotten corners of our minds.

It is in this quiet that I welcome this revelation. I grasp on to the feeling of acceptance with the unwavering faith that, come what may, I will be okay; That my world lies in absolute stillness, assured that when those imminent waves, unhinged from the ties of my strength, come crashing from the banks where they eagerly laid in wait, I will be ready.

I often wish I can pocket these moments for when I feel weakest, when I feel lost. But I am currently in a hurricane, surrounded by cyclones and blizzards, patiently waiting for the moment I can walk out, unafraid and eager, not when the downpour is over or when the thick skies find their silence, but when the storm is at its peak. Where I no longer have to wait for the end, but instead, meet the storm headlong and find that stillness in the ongoing wake of chaos.