Something is odd about the light today. About the sun. The way it is glaring onto the huge piles of leaves everywhere, raked together so diligently during yesterday's springtime hiatus from the cold. Those piles of leaves, they're on every corner, at the end of every driveway and sidewalk, some three, four feet high; and the wind this afternoon is supposed to be gale force, upwards of 35 miles per hour.

Maybe the sun is glaring down like this to make a point -- to show how fleeting so much effort can be. To show that all of the calories burned yesterday, all of the work completed, all of those high spirits and good feelings of accomplishment can be wiped out with a wind.

Everything can be wiped out so simply; maybe there is a good lesson in that. Maybe I should pay attention to that lesson: despite everything I try to do, if I hear that wind blowing, if I see the sun glaring too sharply, if I read a few choices sentences on a screen that truly define everything I have been so naively missing, I should take care to remember that lesson.

And maybe you should, too.

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