On this foggy morning, the sea and sky outside my window blend in layered swaths of grey. The horizon has disappeared, and the mountains that rim it hold their breath in the mist, blindly awaiting its return.
Some days, the world of my business feels this way too. I know the horizon is there, but I cannot see it.
Yet I know the familiar world will reappear in time — the clouds will lift, the sun will emerge. The sea will leap and embrace the rocky shore in fronds of foam. Gulls and eagles will ride the wind. The dance of sea and sky, the unflinching rim of the horizon, will be visible once more.
What keeps me — or you, or any of us — from panicking when fog blots out the known world?
Experience, of course. We know that these Northwest mists obscure without fundamentally altering the bones of the landscape.
But I remember waking up one morning when I was five years old, and walking out in my pyjamas into a world dissolved in fog. Oh, the magic of it! Its soft, cold whiteness. Its mysterious power to restore the world to its true, invisible majesty.
I ran out into the fog that morning, my whole body blazing with delight. Arms flung wide. Embracing cloud, tasting its sweetness on my tongue.
How did I know it was friendly? That we belonged together, fog and I, sisters sharing a delicious secret?
There is a knowing we are born with. Until it dissolves into the doubts and certainties, the hissing neon grids of belief and opinion that blind us to what we know, more surely than fog blankets the horizon.
That inner knowing keeps me sure-footed, walking the tideline of my business with confidence even when I can’t see the ground under my feet.
How about you? What fog obscures your horizon right now? How do you feel about the gifts or perils it holds for you? What happens when you choose to be in relationship with it?