During my habitual five-minute meditation yesterday, I stared out the window instead of closing my eyes. My office window is rather high, and most of my view is of a large, leafy bush. Today was a windy day, and the bush was in constant motion. It didn’t take long for my imagination to humanize both wind and foliage.

The wind pushed, and the branches reared back as though fearful of the wind.

The wind relaxed, and the branches settled down into their former state of calm.

The wind ruffled individual leaves, and they rose, uplifted, toward the sun.

It wasn’t much of a leap to characterize the wind as the uncontrollable forces of life, and the bush as a person trying hard to withstand the blow. The image stuck in my mind for the rest of the day.

This morning, I was driving my kids back from a semi-stressful shopping trip (there was a lot of “I want that” from them, and a lot of “you can’t have everything you want” from me) when we merged onto a new road and hit a spate of traffic.

We were hungry. We were cranky. I was about to descend into true frustration when I remembered the wind and the bush.

The wind was blowing a little. Was I going to let it push me around, or just allow it to ruffle my leaves before I refocused my attention on the sun?

I can’t say I wasn’t still annoyed by the traffic or my kids’ complaints or my own physical hunger. But my meditation image helped me put it all in perspective.