Dancing and Shoaling in the fiery seas,
The waves finally embrace the rocky shores.
O listen! Mighty and the tall, young and the aged, swell and the windsea!
All break and retreat.
So is it now all this show to exit?
As if the silence was broken only to end in a fading foam,
Leaving behind a footprint among the worlds' sands.
I walked up the shore, sans pride, sans grief.
Day started with blissful Hawaiian dresses and flowers and turned out to be one of the most adventurous days of my visit in the Hawaiian island, Maui. As wind gusts rocked the cars in traffic, I witnessed a brush fire that spread all across the mountains and burnt around 500 acres in a span of a few hours. After a long ordeal of four hours in traffic, so grateful to be back in the hotel with food and water. Fires, still flaming!
Hawaii, a land of waves and volcanoes is also home to wildfires and brush fires that occur due to natural or human activities.
The brush fire on December 27, 2020 started around 5.30 pm, Hawaiian Standard Time (HST) (https://www.kitv.com/story/43102416/maui-red-cross-opens-shelter-in-olowalu-area) and spread across the mountains along the Lahaina-Kihei highway. Traffic came to a stand still as everyone watched the fires light up the mountains and the trees near the road on fire in awe. As the fires spread on the windward and leeward side of the mountains, the smoke drastically reduced the visibility.
I got curious if that was captured from space :) Well, wearing a Pollyanna attitude here 😉
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| Fig 2: Graphic showing Maui island and fire spot in red (Source : Fire Information for Resource Management System, FIRMS : https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/) Fire hotspots were captured by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument onboard the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) spacecraft, 375m and NASA Terra/Aqua MODIS instruments. GOES-R image of the fires are not yet clear. I also quickly pulled out some Weather research and forecasting model forecast from Pacific Island Ocean Observing System.  Fig 3: WRF Forecast of wind speed from https://www.pacioos.hawaii.edu/weather/model-wind-hawaii/ (Model runs not personally evaluated) The story is still shaping up. More later, as the satellites pass over Maui in the morning. |
Of course, we already know that. But, the hard reality is that we endure in all ways possible, in all areas of our lives, to avoid this truth. Being able to do a lot of soul searching during the quarantine this year, I have found myself reading more short bursts of Psychology. One collection that has attracted me so much in the recent past is Susan Jeffers's EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY.
In a bold feat of imagination and courage, this book gives flesh and emotion to a realization: Deep acceptance of the nature of life that there is no way to create certainty in life.
The book unfurls from many angles about the fear of admiring the wonderment of life, which is the unknown. It is interesting to see how Susan pokes at bigger questions like 'how would you choose to live if you are not afraid of the unknown', 'what if you don't try to erase the uncertainty every second, rather embrace it' with simple sentences and light language. Lol, the author throws an emotional punch when she asserts the only way to enjoy life is to take a good seat in the theater and let the chapters unfold without having an urge to perfectly control everything.
What sets this book apart from the common psychology books I have read are the glimpses into real life scenarios, exercises, and practical tools that we can utilize to take a step towards embracing uncertainty. What really caught my heart is a sentence from the book: 'Life is beautiful not despite these uncertainties, but because of these uncertainties'.
Everyone in my inner circle is her fan and my mom still thinks she poops everywhere in the house and she cannot find the litter box. Nope, that's not true. She is extremely disciplined. That's just my mom's irrational fear for cats.
My office chair at home is her throne. She is usually kind enough to allow me to sleep on the corner of bed. She likes to sleep at the center and due to my fear that I might accidentally roll over her, I try to sleep at the edge 😂. Her toys are her toys only and my teddy bears are her toys too. Only sound she immediately responds to is the one from opening the wet food can.
