On Cloud 9

Cloud 9 is defined as "a feeling of extreme happiness or euphoria, feeling like you're floating on air." [1]  This blogger can only reach Cloud 9 in his dream state.  For him, it is only in the clouds where romance is alive and well, and where love is never subject to accounting, where giving of oneself is reciprocated a hundred fold which in turn, inspires even more self-sacrifice and giving, until the giving and the receiving complete a circle that never ends.

Although life can be difficult, imperfect, painful and lonely, it is unparalleled in its richness which can only be understood fully by the observer who has never experienced it.  Despite life's spectrum of pains, life always has its moments of sweetness, whether it is with someone or in prayer alone.  It is the sum of these sweet moments that gives life its meaning.  It is the yearning of a never-ending sweetness that the heart craves for, that is not available in this world but in another, on Cloud 9, that can only be reached by means of a life lovingly lived, however impossible it may be at times.

Cloud 9 is a dreamscape that is both ordinary and unique.  It is not quite Heaven because Cloud 9 is based on a collection of memorable vignettes that is within the boundaries of the human experience and imagination.  Heaven has dimensions that extend beyond the limits of the human mind and are incomprehensible, but like Heaven, Cloud 9 is where youth, beauty and wisdom coincide, at least in the mind, and where the realities of the world are an insignificant and a forgotten past.

It is in the present that the forgettable past is recalled, in which realities speak more clearly than dreams to an imperfect and aging self in an imperfect and changing world, where romance is a dance that ends when the music ends, where love for another is conditional and obligingly reciprocated, where dreams can come alive only in the passing distant clouds.


[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cloud%209