New Orleans and The Cloud That Changed My Life

Around August of 2018, I had an epiphany waiting for a bus in downtown Nashville. I was looking at the sky, watching a big, fluffy cloud go by. It a soft white where the sun touched it and a deep gray on its underbelly. It was perfectly ordinary, but as I stood there, I felt my chest rise. I felt my mouth gap open. This huge, beautiful thing was hanging above my head. Thousands and thousands of gallons of water stood in stasis right there. And in moments, that cloud would be gone, shaped by the wind into something different and it would move on.

I teared up as my mind ran through all the variables that made that cloud appear and made me there to see it. Just enough water had to evaporate, I was going somewhere that morning, the Earth had liquid water and was just far enough away from the fiery ball of plasma we call the Sun to create and support life. Tens of thousands of questions cycling in my mind.

In that moment, I believed. Not in a God (at least, not one that I’ve seen written down), but I believed in something.

After taking my bus ride and numbly drifting through the rest of the afternoon, I took time to actually think about what had happened to me. That intense reflection didn’t stop for days. I started applying that thought process to everything and everyone I saw. It became exhausting, but I welcomed it. Pretty much everything made me hopeful or even excited.

I tell stories like most people breathe air. It’s been a method of survival for me. I couldn’t leave this story untold, as much for me as it was for anyone else. I needed to sort out whatever it was that just happened to me. I had to, in essence, tell the story to myself.

That story became the script for a video called “Wonderment”. I say to people that watch it that the video changed my life. And to a certain extent, it’s true. That video represents a weird day that made my view of the world do a 180. I went from a teenage-angst riddled nihilist with very little hope in the world to someone who saw beauty in impossible places.

Fast forward a month or so, and I find myself sitting in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I am utterly convinced that the sidewalk around Jackson Square is the single most magical place on Earth. As hippie-dippy as this sounds, you could feel the energy radiating off every gray brick of pavement. It’s not like Disney magic (I’ve been to Disney, and that place is magical for a much different reason). The Quarter has a gritter magic; a dirty, unrefined force that you can feel no matter where you go.

If I’d gone a year before, I don’t know what I would have felt. Maybe sketched out, maybe a little scared, maybe it would’ve just been another trip in my mind. After that wonderful day the world changed, I allowed myself to be open to the unfettered emotion New Orleans radiates. I let myself be moved by the insignificant, because there’s a lot more little meaningless things than there are big, life-altering events.

The first day we were there, I went back to our Airbnb and cried. It was almost too much to handle. Not just the city itself, but wonder finally became real there. Sure, it was real before, but I’d seen it in action in ways I hadn’t before. I wasn’t “making it up.” This was something real and tangible. It wasn’t just a cloud above a busy city. It became so much more than that.

People watch that video I made and cry. They cry and they thank me for having such a unique perspective. I thought I was the only person in the world to whom any what I just said made sense. I thought people would dismiss it as silly optimism.

So far, they haven’t. They’ve taken the message and applied it in ways that are meaningful to them. That’s the best thing they could get from anything I’ve ever said. The logic can fit into your own life however you want it to. These little gifts can be God’s love or random chance of the Universe or whatever you want it to be. That’s the beauty of wonderment; it’s just looking for things.

I task you, reader, to find something around you that’s easy to dismiss. The sun, trees, a penny you found on the sidewalk, you name it. The bar is quite low here. Find that thing and consider that you were around to see it. The timings of life made it so that you got to this point and saw this thing. That tiny detail has made my life more amazing than ever. It doesn’t have to change your life as profoundly as it changed mine, but if it brings a smile to your face or a little happiness to your day, then I’ve done my job.

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