I was walking my daughter home from school today and the wind was howling around us blowing thousands of leaves down the street.

All I could think was “Where do they all end up? Hopefully not in my yard..”

Funny how a thing like the wind is something we live in and around every day, accepting its powerful effects matter-of-factly, and don’t really know where it comes from or where it goes?

How many dads walking their girls did it pass? In how many cities?

My wife and I came across a neighbour blowing leaves in his backyard who had it piled up half the height of his fence, and his yard was still full of leaves from the four beautiful trees he was probably cursing at the time. Today’s wind will do more in a matter of seconds. In fact, today’s wind might fill his yard up with all the leaves in the neighbourhood. We would all feel sorry for him but secretly pleased (we’re Canadian) that it wasn’t our problem.

I’m just hoping my yard is situated in the middle somewhere so the leaves blow out of it.

There are few things stronger than wind. Few things more mysterious too, things that aren’t quite tangible but potent all the same. You can see the effects after they are gone, but can’t quite put your finger on it in the moment.

The same wind passed other dads and other daughters who have a similar bond that is hard to put into words because maybe the bond is deeper than that sort of thing. Logic tells us why we’re committed to each other but there is an earthier emotion that drives it. Most of us don’t make logical decisions really, though that’s what we tell ourselves, we make them from a less refined, more instinctive part of our soul. If you tried to hurt my daughter I would DO something long before I would THINK about doing something.

Belief is also like that. Everyone believes in something, but not many people can put it into words, as if words somehow legitimize the emotion or logic that created them.. Belief actually runs deeper than emotion, which runs deeper than our ability to express them sometimes.

Some people believe in God, though it’s hard to put into words why we do. I honestly think most people believe there is something greater than the human race that started it all, but more base instincts tell us how we will respond to him if he exists. If he exists he  probably shouldn’t be ignored? If he shouldn’t be ignored should he be obeyed? If I don’t feel like obeying then what do I do? Logic often just fills the gaps in our instinct until we agree with ourselves. But putting this into words is hard to do for some and too easy for others. And we have this silly habit of needing to believe what we say…

Ever hear a fake apology? It didn’t come from the deepest place. Some of us are so locked into how we’ve been thinking for decades we’re not really sorry anymore, but we’ve figured out we should probably say something when we screw up because everyone is looking at us. After a few decades of never really dealing with issues it eventually breaks relationship with the people around us. Nothing tangible really, but it effects us.

What started it all? Instinct. Instinct we don’t understand and couldn’t control if we did. This leaves us feeling powerless like I felt in the wind today, and I’d rather feel anything else, so I ended up asking Neela “What happened at school?”

“Well Dad, I have a story for you! There was a piece of paper that blew up on the roof of a house by the school. THEN IT BLEW ONTO A LIGHT POLE AND STUCK THERE!!!”

Something stuck with me too, and the light I was avoiding came on.

Instinctively she did something I didn’t do in the middle of the wind storm,

she looked up to see what was going on.

I was too busy watching the sidewalk…