The Journey
I’m being pulled up, up towards the blazing sun. Up into the clouds. I’m surrounded by light, and I’m racing through the air. I look around and see others like myself …others at the beginning of their journey as well. We don’t speak to each other; we don’t even acknowledge at each other. We keep our gaze straight up at the awaiting clouds. I am being lifted by the intensity of the sun’s rays. So hot… It’s almost as if it’s smiling down on me, looking over me and helping me as I travel.
I am slowly traveling now, slowly floating along in a white mist. I’m in a cloud now. The cloud is gently pushing me along in the sky. Moving quietly, harmlessly, productively. The cloud joins other clouds, and therefore makes itself bigger. Sometimes fragments of our cloud break apart, separating us from the other raindrops, who don’t even spare us a goodbye glance.
How long have I traveled? I have no idea. It seems like days, weeks, months before our cloud is finally a large gray mass covering the sky and hiding the sun. Our cloud is too heavy to hold me any longer, and so I wait in anticipation. Where will I fall this time? Over Spain? In the jungle? Maybe I will just fall ovewr the ocean, and move along with it’s currents until the sun comes out again. But as the cloud suddenly lets me go, and I look down, I see that I am falling over a suburban neighborhood. I see little dots of yellow, which I guessed are children scurrying home from school wearing rain jackets. Cars move along like animals rushing to their caves or holes.
The fall is amazing. I feel the wind tossing me and turning me in every direction. I crash into other raindrops, momentarily joining us together, but then the wind pushes me somewhere else. How long do I fall? About a minute. No matter how short the fall might be, the fall is the reason for the journey. This fall is what I have been waiting for; why I exist.
But my fall soon comes to an end. Or so I thought.
Some hit the sidewalk, crash into the soil, or swim joyfully down car windows and fire hydrants. Their journeys are over for now. But I land on the roof of a house. Before I know it, I am sliding along the edge, swirling along in a stream of water with other raindrops.
Drip, drop, drip, and one by one we go our separate ways.
Drop. I land on a window. Others are there too, resting, I guess, from the fall. I turn my gaze to look inside the window. There is a young girl staring sadly out into the street. She is wrapped in a blanket, and in her hand in a steaming mug. I look closely at her face. She is pretty. But in her eyes, I see tears. Tears are just like raindrops, I know, except tears come from someplace deeper. Tears experience a different kind of fall.
I want to continue looking at the girl, but the window is getting too crowded, and because of that I am being pushed against other raindrops and I slide along to the bottom of the window. As I got my final glances at the girl, I wish her only good things on her own journey.
I drip onto the pavement. I stay there until the sun comes out. Then, I am being lifted again. Slowly, slowly, at first… Then I’m racing. Racing, racing, up into the clouds, where my journey begins again.