Crazy beautiful

Now that my mind is officially numb to every British television series on Netflix, all household items have been tested for sledding potential, and my re-entry to high school is on an indefinite hiatus, I’d like to dedicate this blog post to the Ice Queen in all of our lives. You know her best as Mother Nature.

Atlanta has been a bit of a Twilight Zone this week. With more than 500,000 residents and 10 snow plows, it doesn’t take flashbacks to my fall semester of starting every morning with a kindergarten dance to The Number Rock to do the math: People have gone crazy.

They’ve abandoned their cars to help push others over hills and on to their destinations.

They’ve forgone television to play cards by the fire or build snow forts and playfully pummel neighbors.

They’ve walked slowly through the streets and actually taken in their surroundings instead of road-raging through the quickest routes that Tom-Tom will take them.

They’ve dressed for the elements instead of for each other.

They’ve paused because there’s nothing else they can do.

They’ve given thanks for the warmth they know isn’t available to all and perhaps even acknowledged the injustice of that and taken steps to change it.

A friend recently posted, “Say what you will about us, Northerners, but there is something humbling about not being able to beat Mother Nature.” I love that southern-fried piece of wisdom and know it applies to more than just this region and level of precipitation.

Across the globe, my favorite Aussie is working to clean up the homes and businesses of fellow Brisbaners who have been blindsided by the flooding in Queensland. She, too, has been a witness to the beautiful madness that the weather is capable of inspiring in us when it seems we’ve grown indifferent to the stories, statistics, and images that already should have moved us to act with compassion and urgency.

I’m not saying we should be nostalgic about natural disasters, but this week has been a good reminder to be mindful of our true status in the scheme of things. We’re specks who are capable of as much good or bad as we want when we choose to amass or disband in the face of adversity.

Crazy can be beautiful, and I mean that in a non-Kirsten Dunst kind of way.