Against the Wind

If they give you lined paper, write the other way. -William Carlos Williams

Is it strange that I prefer to run against the wind? It is kind of like going against the grain, which I tend to do in most other areas. There is something about the wind hitting my face, the whoosh by my ears, and invisible forces crashing against me that keeps me motivated to keep going. I think there is a slight illusion that I am running faster, even though in reality I am probably slower. I am, however, working a little bit harder, putting up a fight with the direction the wind wants me to go. (Not to mention it keeps me cool, as the weather this year has decided to skip Spring altogether and jump right into early Summer.)

I am going against you, wind.
And while I am at it, world, I am going against you too. You and all your flashy, cultural lies, and a milieu that fosters immoral behavior and admonishes those who make the biggest splash, have the most possessions, or the prettiest face. Who decides what/who is popular anyway?
You don't value the moral, the good, the true. You tell us that we belong here in the world and we need to find our place in it. We should never find our place in it because we are only visitors here. We belong to God, in heaven, and those who do find their place in this world forfeit their true home. Satan grins when people feel as if they fit in quite nicely with the world because they grow into an ease and comfort that shuts them into complacency. Then they lose sight of the eternal.

Read this part of Screwtape's letter to his nephew, teaching him how to be a successful devil:

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want. (The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis)

So when I run against the wind I suppose my thoughts run faster than the wind concluding that I am going against the grain of the world. And that's how I like it.