Be the Wind

Worry and fear move through us like weather systems we didn’t invite but somehow agreed to host. They arrive unannounced, carrying old histories in their pockets, and before we know it they have redecorated the inner house—draping every thought, every gesture, with their particular fabric. None of us is immune. To be human is to feel these energies curl their fingers around our breath, tightening just enough to remind us they exist.

They are clever, these energies. They don’t come crashing through the door like a storm you can name and prepare for. Instead, they weave themselves into us like artisans at a loom, threading past experiences into present moments until it’s difficult to tell where memory ends and imagination begins. Fear remembers being unsafe. Worry remembers scarcity. The body remembers what the mind might wish to forget—how it once struggled for air, how it once learned vigilance as a form of survival.

The other night, sitting in meditation, I met one of these old companions again. It wasn’t new. That was the startling part. I recognized it immediately, like a familiar face in a crowd. This fear had been with me for as long as I could remember, quietly present through the years, sometimes faint as background noise, sometimes loud enough to drown out everything else. I realized, with a strange tenderness, that it may well remain with me for the rest of my life. Not because it must rule me, but because it is part of my story—etched there by earlier chapters written when I did not yet know how to choose.

What struck me most was not its permanence, but its volume. Some days it whispers. That night it roared. It flared and danced, fed by my attention, fueled by my belief in its imagined authority. It felt powerful only because I was lending it power.

And then, as if on cue, the wind rose outside.

It came alive in the dark, rushing through the trees, swirling around the house, moving everything that dared to move. What could not bend, it simply wrapped itself around—unoffended, unbothered, continuing on its way. The wind did not negotiate. It did not hesitate. It danced because dancing was its nature. It roared because roaring was its song.

Listening to it, something inside me loosened.

What if, I wondered, I were the wind?

What if I moved through my life with that same unarguable presence—unafraid, expressive, expansive? What if I stopped shrinking at the edges of old stories and instead followed my own glorious path, unconcerned with what resisted me or refused to sway? Would fear lose its grip if I no longer bowed to it? Would I cease to feel small if I remembered how vast I am meant to be?

In that moment, it became clear that the wind and I were not so different. We are both made of movement, both shaped by unseen forces. The difference is this: the wind has no choice. It can only be what it is.

I, however, do.

Earlier that evening, I had chosen fear. I had chosen to revisit the narrow corridors of the past, to believe that old limitations were still in charge. I had chosen to forget—forget the breath that carries me, forget the quiet intelligence that has always guided me, forget the faith that rises when I stop clinging to what once hurt.

But listening to the wind, I chose differently.

I chose to remember myself as something larger than my fear. I chose expansion over contraction. I chose movement over paralysis. I chose trust.

There was a fleeting envy in realizing that the wind is spared this decision. It never doubts its worth or direction. It never second-guesses its right to exist in full force. And yet, what a greater blessing it is to have been given choice—to create beyond instinct, to rise beyond habit, to become more than our conditioning.

For a brief, luminous moment, I was the wind. And in that moment, fear loosened its hold. The worry that had once felt like an inheritance revealed itself as something optional. I felt aligned with a deeper rhythm, one that does not deny fear but refuses to be governed by it.

This understanding is vast, far larger than a single night or a single meditation. But for that moment, it was enough. Fear receded. Breath returned. And I stood in the quiet truth that we are not meant to live small, huddled against imagined storms.

We are meant to move.

We are meant to choose.

We are meant to be glorious.

Hari  Tat Sat