VENTUS

Nobody has ever seen the wind. We see what it does. Laundry lifting on a line, grass bending in one direction, a plastic bag climbing past the fourth floor. The wind itself stays invisible, and it never stops long enough to be looked at.

Heraclitus, as Plato remembered him, said that everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. He was talking about rivers, but the wind would have served him just as well. You cannot stand in the same wind twice. By the time you feel it on your face, it is already somewhere behind you.

Most of us spend a great deal of energy on the opposite. We want things to hold still: the job, the relationship, the shape of an ordinary week. When they start to move, we lean against them, the way you lean into a strong gust on a bridge.

Sometimes that is right. Some things are worth leaning against. But anyone who has cycled into a headwind for an hour knows what it costs, and anyone who has turned around knows the relief. The same wind that fought you is now at your back.

You cannot hold the wind. You can decide which way to face.

Sailors have known this for thousands of years. They never tried to stop the wind. They learned to read it, set the sail, and let it carry them further than their arms ever could.

Change will keep blowing, whatever we think of it. What we choose is the angle.